I love to eat siu mais. These are Chinese delicacies, often found in dim sum or Cantonese restaurants serving dim sum. They are also commonly found in hawker centres or foodcourts, at stalls that sell drinks and light snacks including buns and dim sums. Not all of them are nice though, and I must say, the really nice ones are hard to find.
What makes for a really nice siu mai then? The really nice ones are juicy and soft and chewy and oily. Where I used to study in my university days, there was a stall at my faculty canteen that used to sell siu mais, really huge ones, at just fifty cents each. I used to eat them for my lunch – five of them (one was always for him). I loved it, and I remember I looked forward to lunch every day because of the siu mais. Somehow, I can’t seem to find the same big and delicious ones anywhere anymore. Maybe my memories are tinted by the good old days so nothing else compares to them anymore.
This recipe includes an additional step of frying the pork lard to obtain the fat liquid which is added to the meat to make it taste nicer and juicier and oilier. It does help a bit, but I still can’t get that taste that I used to have. Guess I’ll just have to make do with them for now.
Make sure to eat them with lots of chilli oil too!
Ingredients:
- Pork fat: 200g, cut into 1″ pieces
- Pork shoulder butt with fat: 450g, diced
- Shrimp: 225g
- Dried mushroom: 4, soaked, diced
- Water: 1/2 cup
- Potato starch: 2 tbsp
- Shaoxing wine: 2 tbsp
- Sugar: 1.5 tbsp
- Salt: 2 tsp
- Chicken powder: 1 tsp
- Sesame oil: 2 tsp
- Ground white pepper: 1/4 tsp
- Wanton wrapper: 30
- Fish roe: to garnish
Method:
- Place pork fat in nonstick pot with water. Bring to a boil, then cook for 30sec.
- Drain and rinse with warm water. Pat pork fat dry.
- Return pork fat to pot. Cook over medium heat to render liquid fat. Remove clear liquid fat, strain and cool. Discard remaining pork fat.
- Blend together pork shoulder butt, shrimp, dried mushroom to form a smooth paste.
- Mix together water, 4 tbsp liquid lard, potato starch, shaoxing wine, sugar, salt, chicken powder, sesame oil & white pepper. Blend into pork mixture.
- Leave mixture in fridge to marinate for 30min.
- Cut off 4 corners of wanton wrappers. Place 2 tbsp filling in middle of wrapper. Use the back of spoon to spread it out to edge of wrapper. Form an ‘o’ with palm, then push wrapper down to form a cup. Squeeze and smooth top of mixture with back of spoon.
- Repeat with remaining wrappers.
- Line tray with parchment and grease. Steam 10min on high heat.
- Garnish with fish roe to serve.
Disclaimer:
- I seemed to have used the wrong wrapper which isn’t the typical yellow type that is used to wrap wanton. This one works too, but if you want to make the siu mais look much brighter, using the correct, yellow ones will definitely work a lot better.
Serving:
30 pieces
