Northern Chinese-ish Bao & not-chive pockets
Ya girl is on a brutal schedule these days, working 4:45am to 2pm. The good news is, the commute is zero minutes, my coffee robot makes good coffee, and I have a warm cardigan for those dark cold mornings. I walk Rosie on my break at 8 or 9, and then let her out again real quick at 1-ish. It’s a pretty compatible schedule, except that I just physically cannot go to bed at like 8:30pm. It’s just against every bone in my body.
I usually eat lunch around 1pm also, and I’m usually starving by then, so I usually want to eat a little quick snack in the morning after Rosie’s walk. These buns are the perfect thing to pop into the microwave straight from the freezer for about 90 seconds, and they’re piping hot and steamy. And most importantly, it’s not junk food.
Northern-Chinese-ish Bao Buns
The filling can literally be whatever. Usually they’re pretty meat heavy, but I wanted to put vegetables in, so I used the napa in the back of my fridge, some mushrooms, carrots, and mung bean noodles to stretch it a little farther. But with all my extra add-ins, I ended up making a ridiculous amount of filling. That’s why I ended up making chive-pocket-style buns with the other half.
Wrappers
In the bowl of a stand mixer, add in this order:
250g lukewarm water
1 tsp yeast
500g AP flour
1/2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
Knead for 5-8 minutes on low.
The dough should be perfectly moist - not sticky or sticking to the side of the bowl, and not dry or hard. If it’s just not coming together, add 1 tbsp of water at a time.
If mixing by hand, stir the mixture together until it’s a shaggy mess, and cover and let it hydrate for 20 minutes or so before kneading.
Put in a lightly oiled bowl, cover, and proof in a warm place until doubled.
Meanwhile, make the filling!
Filling
Totally flexible. Literally put whatever you want in it. In my family, we always went for 1/2 meat + 1/2 veg. This time, I added vermicelli because I like when they’re in Korean mandu.
Put ingredients into a large mixing bowl:
350g ground pork (a fattier cut, like shoulder)
40g (1 packet) of mung bean vermicelli, soaked in hot water for 5 minutes and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
6 dried shiitake mushrooms, soaked in hot water for 30 minutes, squeezed, and diced
60g hot (shiitake mushroom soaking) water infused with (strain these out):
3 whites of green onion, smashed
1/2 inch ginger, smashed
2 star anise pods
1 tsp fennel seed
350g cabbage, diced and tossed in about 1/2 tsp salt for 30 minutes and squeezed tightly to remove excess water
1/2 cup carrots, minced
3 green onions (green part), finely sliced
Season with:
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
a lot of white pepper
2 Tbsp soy sauce
1 Tbsp sesame oil
2 Tbsp cornstarch
1 Tbsp Shaoxing wine
1 egg (not necessary for a meat-heavy filling, but mine has a lot of veg and could use a little help binding)
Mix thoroughly.
I put on a glove and knead the mixture through my hand to really emulsify the meat, and allow everything to bind together.
It might look too wet and loose at first, but after a few minutes, the proteins and cornstarch will absorb the water, and the filling will seem to hold together a bit better. If it’s still falling apart into separate pieces of everything, add more cornstarch.
Microwave about a tablespoon of filling for 15-20 seconds and taste for seasoning. It should taste juuuust slightly salty, to stand up to the soft fluffy wrapper.
Add more salt/sugar/pepper as necessary. The measurements are pretty conservative for this amount of filling.
To Assemble & Cook
Divide the dough into 40g pieces for about 20 small-medium buns.
Roll the dough balls into circles on the counter, really try and punch the air out. Keep them covered while you’re working.
To make wrappers, flatten each dough ball with the palm of your hand, and roll them like a dumpling peel - turn as you roll, and apply more pressure at the edges than in the center.
You really want the outer edge to be thinner for pleating.
Put the wrapper flat in your hand, and put a generous mound of filling in the middle, leaving about a 1/2-inch edge.
Cup the filling in the palm of your hand as you pleat around the outside. This takes some practice. It sort of involves a gentle tug before each pleat. Really pinch and seal it tight at the end.
Place each bao on a little piece of parchment paper, and then onto a steamer rack.
Once you’ve filled a whole layer, proof them over hot water in the steamer for 20 minutes or so, until they look visibly puffy.
When they’re ready to cook, just bring the water to a boil (with the buns in the steamer) and then turn down to low.
Steam for about 15 minutes, shut off the heat, and let them hang out in the sauna for 10 more minutes.
I don’t own a giant multi-layer steamer like my mom, so I used a perforated pizza pan we got as a gift, on top of a skillet, with a wok as the lid. It works well, but I could only do 8 buns at a time.
Notes
My mom usually makes the wrappers without a recipe and just goes by feel. A 50% hydration dough is a good starting point. From there, it’s just a pinch of yeast (more will proof quicker, etc) and some sugar to get it started, and some salt. You just sort of go by feel for that perfectly soft but not sticky dough - and trust me, when you have the right consistency, you’ll know. It’s perfectly not sticky, but still soft enough to manipulate without excessive force.
You can make bigger buns, with up to 60g per wrapper without being too ridiculous.
This time, I tried a new technique of using ginger water from Chinese Cooking Demystified - kind of an annoying extra step, I think I’ll just chop and grate ingredients and use broth like I normally do.
I doubled the recipe for the wrapper, even though I originally only made 10 buns :( If you need to steam in 2 batches, you can keep the second batch of buns on their parchment squares & covered on the counter. When you’re ready to steam, just place them on the steamer rack to finish proofing before turning on the heat. They might need a shorter steamer proofing time.
Addendum Recipe - Chive pocket dough
I made too much filling, of course, as I always do. So I turned the rest into a chive-pocket type situation because the vermicelli reminded me of chive pockets. And eating the same filling in a different shape and style is still a totally different experience!
This dough is a partially hot water dough (see notes).
Place into a medium mixing bowl:
225g AP flour
While stirring with chopsticks, drizzle in:
68g water, off boil
After creating little lumps of wet flour, add in:
68g water, room temp
1 Tbsp oil
1/4 tsp salt
Optionally, add just a 2-finger pinch of yeast (after you’ve brought your dough temp down with cool water).
I don’t do this in my family for chive pockets, but I read this trick somewhere during quarantine, and it’s always stuck with me. It’s supposed to make your typically unleavened wrapper seem ever so slightly lighter. I couldn’t tell the difference though.
Mix by hand until the dough is mostly hydrated, but it will probably still look like a shaggy mess. This is fine!
Cover, and let rest and hydrate for 20-30 minutes.
To wrap, divide the dough into 6 equal pieces, about 47g each, and roll them into round balls.
Follow the exact process as my saltenas. The only difference is you should roll the wrapper out much thinner for the chive pockets. Mine ended up just smaller than the size of my palm at the right width, which is maybe 1/8-inch?
Be sure to squeeze out all the air before sealing!
Cook on a preheated nonstick skillet on medium-low. I used a lid to try to trap the steam and cook the insides. If your pockets are particularly thick, you can use the potsticker method to finish them off:
Add a splash (1/4 cup?) of cold water to the hot pan and immediately close the lid to allow the pockets to steam.
When the water has mostly evaporated, reopen the lid and turn the head back up to mediumish to recrisp the outside.
Notes
Hot water dough: hot water will partially cook and gelatinize some of the starch, so your resulting dough will have more extensibility (stretches easily) instead of elasticity (bounces back easily after stretching). A hot water dough is also less toothsome. So you can experiment with all sorts of ratios of hot vs cold water to reach a desired texture for any application. In this case, we don’t want the dough to bounce back too much for ease of wrapping, but we don’t sacrifice all the texture either.
Best enjoyed while warm, or microwaved for 60 seconds straight from frozen.
Obviously, cooking can be done in a stainless steel skillet, but temp control is trickier in order for it to not stick. In a stainless steel pan, you’d want to wait until the pan is sufficiently heated to add the pockets, and cook them potsticker style (sear both sides and don’t flip until a crust forms, add water/close lid and steam, remove lid and recrisp the outsides).
You can actually make these into a thinner and bigger shaped pocket, if you want. In that case, roll the wrapper out slightly thinner too.