Mr Big’s Steamed Dumplings

 

Some people might see these as finger food for a party or an entree. We see steamed dumplings as a meal, albeit one we eat with our fingers: dipping a dumpling in the plum sauce, popping it in your mouth and then reaching for the next one before they’re all gone and you have to wait for the next batch from the steamer. Unless someone is cooking Peking Duck somewhere in the kitchen, we don’t want to save room for anything else to eat.

I like to make these on a movie night, bringing in a plate with a dozen or so every ten to fifteen minutes.

The beauty of these dumplings is you can shove whatever takes your fancy into them. The ingredients below just happen to be what I used on Thursday night, but I’ve also made them with crab meat, without the prawns, with bamboo shoots, without the sherry, with sweet chilli sauce – you get the idea. After you’ve made them a couple of times, and you won’t get away with making them once, play with the ingredients and make them truly your own.

You will need:

500g pork mince

100g prawn meat, roughly chopped

1 tablespoon minced ginger

1teaspoon minced garlic

1 shallot, chopped

1 225g tin water chestnuts, roughly chopped

2 tablespoons sweet sherry

2 tablespoons soy sauce + soy sauce to dip

2 tablespoons plum sauce * + plum sauce to dip

1 pack wonton skins (40 pack)

STEP ONE: Thoroughly mix all the ingredients, except the wrappers, in a bowl.

STEP TWO: If using bamboo steamers, like the ones shown in our photos, boil some water to put your steamer on. A wok is good but we use a saucepan which happens to be the right size.

STEP THREE: Wrap a ball of the mixture in a wrapper – about a teaspoon’s worth. Easy wrapping method is to put the mixture in the middle and then bring the corners together over the mixture and firmly press them together. Or you can fold wrapper to a triangle and then bring base edges together and, again, firmly press them together.

STEP FOUR: Place half dozen or so dumplings into steamer (we put a sheet of baking paper in the steamer so they don’t stick).

STEP FIVE: Steam until cooked through – we do them for about ten minutes, a little more if required.

STEP SIX: Because you’ve cleverly sat the whole family down in front of a movie while you make these you can get your share of these before they suck them all up. Dip them in the plum or soy sauce – just delicious!

 

* We only use Ayam brand plum sauce. It’s the bomb.

(No money has changed hands for this product endorsement but if you people at Ayam want to send me a box of plum sauce it won’t go to waste 🙂 )

When not typing away over here and checking his stats every two minutes,

Bruce Devereaux hangs out at his ‘BIG FAMILY little income’  Facebook Page.

 ’raising a family on little more than laughs’

1 Comment

  • We do too. It just me and my little guy most of the time and boy does he love dumplings. We will borrow your recipe and start making our own.

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