When I went to high school in Taiwan, we had a set of cooking classes which basically taught us how to cook some simple dishes at home. It was a really fun class and we cooked several different dishes. Shumai was one of them and I love it a lot! I don’t consider those time as the start of my cooking experience because I forgot a lot of what I did. However, given the fact that it was one of the dishes they make high school kids do, it must be really simple yet impressive enough to catch people’s attention. However, in Taiwan, we didn’t eat much dim sum at all. It’s not until I came to the US that I start to have a lot of dim sum. Shumai is one of my favorite dim sum dishes other than har gow shrimp dumplings. Shumai is pretty and tasty. I find that Cantonese cuisine have very pretty dishes such as shrimp dumplings and shumai. Today we will try to make this famous dish, again, in your own kitchen!
Ingredients
- ½ pound of ground pork (coarse ground preferred)
- ½ pound of shrimp
- 4 dried shiitake mushroom (about ¼ cup diced shiitakes)
- 1 tbsp of potato starch
- ½ tsp of salt
- ¼ tsp of white pepper
- 1 tsp of chicken powder
- 1 tsp of sugar
- ¼ cup of ice water (or crushed ice)
- 1 bag of wonton wrapper (need 16 to 20 wrappers)
Before we dive into how to make shumai, please take a look at our Taiwanese meatball, it’s very similar. One thing that fascinate me the most is the characters of meat. If you cook it directly, it’s chunky. However, if you mix it long enough, it will become paste like and bouncy when cooked. The key to a good shumai, in my opinion, is having the bouncy texture which is more important than the filling inside such as shrimp, shiitake mushroom, etc.
Just like Taiwanese meatball, the meat has to be really chilled to have the best result. Therefore, we will keep the ground pork in refrigerator until right before we process this. Once the ground pork is out of the fridge, we need to move quick to finish. Therefore, let’s prepare everything else first before we work on the ground pork.
Soak up the shiitake mushroom first. If your shrimp is previously frozen, take it out as well to thaw. Take half of them, chop them into shrimp paste and cut the other half into ¼” chunks. When the shiitake mushroom is ready, rinse well, squeeze dry and dice into ⅛” dices. Once it’s ready, we can move on to mixing it.
Put the ground pork in a big mixing bowl. Add potato starch, salt, sugar, white pepper, a little bit of chicken powder and ice water. Start mixing it violently!! This is one of the time that I really wish I have a stand mixer 🙂 My life will be so much easier if I have one. Anyway, mix it with the same direction will help the ground pork becomes paste-like quicker! If you work hard enough, in about 15 min, it should start to look right to you 🙂 I personally enjoy watching this process, this is mesmerizing!
Once your “base” of shumai filling is finished, you can add in shrimp paste and mix again. Of course, if you are lazy, you can add shrimp paste at the first round of mixing. I personally like to add it after because I think it will create a different layer of texture. Second reason is that since shrimp is easier to be paste-like, I don’t want to over-beat it. Mix until it’s paste-like again. Add the rest of shrimp chunks and mushroom dices and mix until it’s even.
Here is the fun part! Honestly, wrapping shumai is so much easier than making potstickers or shrimp dumplings. First, like our “OK” gesture, you make a round shape hole with your index finger and thumb. Place a wonton wrapper on top of it, put a tablespoon size of the filling on top of the hole and press down gently. Here is your shumai, might need to touch up a little bit but it’s really just that easy 🙂 When you buy the wonton wrapper, you will see the yellow ones that says Hong Kong style, that is the right one. If you really can’t find that one, any kind of wonton wrapper will work as well. Here is one optional choice for you: You can cut it to round shape and the shumai will look prettier. I cut it for the photo purpose. During the normal days, I will leave it as is!
You will not use that much of wonton wrapper, I suggest you take a ziploc bag and bag the rest of the wrapper upon opening the package and store directly back to the fridge for later use.
Before you steam cook it, let’s decorate that to make it look nicer! I like to put something red to make it look tasty. In this case, I used the fish eggs which I can buy from Chinese market. Place a little on top of each shumai, and the outcome will look really delicious!
Steam cook at high heat for 5 ½ minutes. Here you go! Pretty and tasty dim sum, enjoy!
- ½ pound of ground pork (coarse ground preferred)
- ½ pound of shrimp
- 4 dried shiitake mushroom (about ¼ cup diced shiitakes)
- 1 tbsp of potato starch
- ½ tsp of salt
- ¼ tsp of white pepper
- 1 tsp of chicken powder
- 1 tsp of sugar
- ¼ cup of ice water (or crushed ice)
- 1 bag of wonton wrapper (need 16 to 20 wrappers)
- Soak up three to four dried shiitake mushroom for at least 1 hr
- Rinse out the sand and squeeze dry, dice into ⅛” chunks
- Thaw the shrimp if needed
- Chop ¼ pound of shrimp into shrimp paste
- Dice ¼ pound of shrimp into ¼” chunk crosswise
- Take ½ pound of ground pork out of refrigerator, being chilled will give the best result
- In a big mixing bowl, add ground pork.
- Add salt, chicken powder, potato starch, sugar and white pepper into the mixing bowl
- Add ¼ cup of iced water, mix violently with hand in the same direction or use stand mixer for at least 15 min
- ground pork should become paste like, if not, mix for another 5 min until it’s paste like
- Add shrimp paste, mix until paste like again
- Add shrimp chunks and diced mushroom, mix until even
- cut your wonton wrapper into round shape
- Take your index finger and thumb, form a round shape hole
- Place a wonton wrapper on top of it
- Add a tbsp of filling on top of the round shape hole and press down. The shape of shumai should form naturally
- Put decorations on top
- Steam cook at high heat for 5 ½ minutes
- Enjoy
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