What we made more closely resembled enormous pot stickers than your "simple and delicious" baozi.
(shrimp baozi prior to steaming)
(post-steaming)
Our fillings were amazing, and had our little dumplings come out as they were supposed to, I think we would have had two serious successes on our hands. Our first mistake, as always, was leaving this challenge until we had no time to try to rectify our mistakes. For there were many.
We made two fillings: The first a combination of shrimp, mango, lime juice, garlic, and asian chile sauce; and the second a mixture of ground turkey, garlic, cilantro, lemongrass, and cabbage. Both were really, really delicious. The downfall was our dough. Had you been a fly on our wall, you likely would have had a hard time containing your laughter.
(turkey baozi, after steaming)
While we loved the free form nature of the challenge, I have to assume that we were at least a small disadvantage not having seen these made before. We had no idea how big to roll out each piece of dough, nor how much filling to place inside. The pictures on the reference blog looked to us to be about the size of tortillas, and that is where I am guessing we made our first mistake. I think our dough was much too thinly rolled. There was very little dough to rise, and as a result, we didn't have much "fluff" and nearly no "light and airy."
The second mistake was likely overstuffing. The amount of filling we put in probably contributed to the thinness of our dough. I would also take care not to allow excess liquid in the filling, as our shrimp-filled baozi turned out so badly that we declined to even take photos. The bottoms separated from the tops once we attempted to lift them.
I assume that the thinness of our dough also contributed to our steamer problems. We used a bamboo steamer and for the first group (shrimp) didn't put anything down in the basket to prevent sticking. That was a huge mistake. For the second batch, we placed cabbage leaves down, which prevented sticking, but contributed to sogginess on the bottom. I'm not sure how to fix that.
Our last mistake seemed to have been in the rising. While the recipe noted that the dough would rise very little, the ones we cooked last turned out the best, which was either a result of extra time to rise, or the fact that at the end we started rolling the dough a little less thinly.
I so wish we had not left this until so late because I would love to have had the opportunity to try to understand where exactly we went wrong before posting. Now, though, I'm determined to get this right. The possibilities are endless! I can think of a bau for everyone, and love the idea of the self-contained package.
Don't be surprised if in the near future you see another attempt at baozi!
This was a great challenge, and what cooking is all about. Despite our mistakes, I can see the beauty of these dumplings, and am eager to figure out how to create our own "surprisingly easy and quick" baozi.
1 comment:
As usual, yours looked beautiful! But it does sound like you guys had some growing pains...the last batch look perfect. Did you not see in the ingredients the pieces of parchment paper for the bottoms? Those help immensely. We were sure not to forget them since the first (and only time) we ate these before, Jason ate his paper! However, we were only fortunate enough to eat them, we weren't there for the making of these, so we were almost as clueless as you guys. I totally hear you though on the issue of scale, I think we had a clearer idea. So I guess it sounds like I was rubbing salt in your wounds with 'surprisingly easy', huh?? It sounds like we would have been a perfect combo team though - your fillings and our rolling (and your prettier shapes)! Ours looked ridiculous! Nice work and let us know when you make them again!! Second posting....?
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