Each time, when we want to do a new Asian recipe, we need to find out the best English name of the dish. It has become harder as the recipes become less well-known in America but still very representative of Asian cuisine. What’s even more challenge is because the dish I’m making has more than one Chinese name. It’s either call 水煎包(shui jian bao) which literally translates to water pan-fried bun or 生煎包(Sheng jian bao) which means raw pan-fried bun. The more common English name of this dish is called pan fried buns,.However, it does not deliver the original meaning of this dish. I think the better translation is steam fried bun since the literal meaning of it is “water pan-fried bun”. Steam fried bun is a kind of a bun that is cooked by both steaming and frying. It’s one of the most well-known snack and you can find this at every night market in Taiwan. There is one famous steam fried buns street vendor which my family loves to go. It’s really ironic that the street vendor is so famous that they get more customers than other people who own restaurants! I picked this recipe because I seldom see many Chinese restaurant sell this, even in California! Today, let’s try to make this one at home 🙂 it’s going to be fun I promise!

bun filling ingredient

• ½ pound of ground pork
• 4 cups of chopped cabbage (about ¼ cabbage)
• 1 tbsp of shrimp bran
• 1 green onion
• 1 tbsp of ground ginger (¼ inch of ginger)
• ¼ tsp of white pepper
• ⅓ cup of water
• 1 tbsp of soy sauce

bun ingredient

• 1 bag of trader Joe’s pizza dough

garnish

• 1 green onion
• 1 tbsp of white sesame

First, let’s talk about filling.

For steam fried bun, we always always want to have more vegetables than meat. In fact, the key is how little ground pork you need to use to stick the cabbage together. The less you use, the better it tastes! If you can hear this statement from a meat lover like me, you know it’s true! The crunchiness of cabbage harmonizes with the crunchiness of the pan-fried bottom. Nothing is better than this to any foodie. That’s why you always see a long line for this snack at any Taiwanese night market!

For the traditional steam fried bun, we use cabbage and ground pork. Like what we did for our potstickers recipe. There is a process called “salting” to squeeze out some water from the cabbage with salt. The process involves adding some salt to the chopped cabbage, then using the osmolarity to drive water out. However, we want to take some shortcut here. We will skip the salting process and mix the filling right before you wrap the steam fried buns. I choose to skip the salting because I like to have more juice in the steam fried bun! The only thing you need to be aware of is not to mix it ahead of time since the salt in the meat mixture will drive the water out of cabbage over time which will make the filling soggy and harder to handle.

First, wash the cabbage and chop into ½“ cubes. Second, remove the ground pork from the fridge. Cold ground pork will give the best result when making the filling into a paste-like texture. Mix the ground pork with cold water, shrimp bran, ground ginger, white pepper, soy sauce and green onions.

You may not be familiar with shrimp bran yet. It’s not really the shrimp’s shell but tiny dried shrimps. Unlike dried shrimps which still have shrimp meat, you really don’t have any meat in shrimp bran since those shrimps are too tiny. It’s so tiny that you can literally treat them as seasoning. You will find many different ways of using it later on since it’s a very common ingredient in Chinese dishes.

Once you mix the meat mixture into paste-like. You are almost ready! Keep both chopped cabbage and meat filling in fridge until you are ready to wrap the buns.

Take out one trader Joe’s pizza dough. It’s very convenient! It is basically a perfectly risen dough made of all-purpose flour and mix with a bit of oil and salt. If you want you can definitely make dough from scratch but that’s for a later recipe. Take out one pizza dough, put some all-purpose flour on your hands and your kneading surface and you can start. Put some flour on the dough and knead until it’s not sticky to the hands. If it’s still sticky, carefully add a bit more flour. You don’t want to add too much! Adding too much flour will make the end product too firm, that’s why we need to be careful. Once it’s processed. cut them into 16 small dough.

Take one small dough, round it up and press down into disc shape. Take a rolling pin and roll it out, in a very specific way. It’s a useful skill to learn, you have to hold the dough in hand and rotate the dough as you roll it. For each roll, gently push toward the center. After you rotate one complete turn, you should get a wrapper that is thicker in the center and thinner at the outside. Since it’s thinner at the outside, once you close the bun up, you will have even thickness throughout your steam fried bun. Place a wrapper on your left hand, put about 2 to 3 tbsp of filling on the center to start. First, pinch up a corner with your right index finger and thumb. While holding the wrapper, use the left index finger to push the edge of wrapper toward right index finger. Take in the second corner and pinch again. Repeat the step until the whole bun is close. One more tip here is that you can use your right thumb to prevent the filling from falling out.

Now it’s going to sounds like potstickers now! Heat up a pan at medium heat, add 3 tbsp of oil. Place the steam fried bun into the pan. However, since the skin is thicker than potsticker, you want to fry until the bottom is golden and crispy before you add water. Add a cup to water or cover ⅓ of the height. I will add 1 tsp of flour to the water to enhance the outcome. It will be crispier! Once you add the water, close the lid and continue to “steam fry” for 8 min until the water has evaporated. Now it’s ready! Put on some garnish and steam for a little bit more to make the garnish stick to the bun. Now you are ready to serve the steam fried buns!

5.0 from 2 reviews

Steam fried bun (水煎包)

 

Author:

Jeff Kang

Recipe type: Appetizer

Cuisine: Chinese

Serves: 3 ppl

Prep time: 40 mins

Cook time: 15 mins

Total time: 55 mins

Print

 

it's also known as water pan-fried bun. It's going be easy since we can take the dough directly from Trader Joe's.

Ingredients

• ½ pound of ground pork
• 4 cups of chopped cabbage (about ¼ cabbage)
• 1 tbsp of shrimp bran
• 1 green onion
• 1 tbsp of ground ginger (¼ inch of ginger)
• ¼ tsp of white pepper
• ⅓ cup of water
• 1 tbsp of soy sauce
• 1 bag of trader Joe’s pizza dough
• 1 green onion
• 1 tbsp of white sesame

Instructions

1. Keep the ground pork in refrigerator before use
2. Wash the cabbage and chop into ½” cubes
3. take the ground pork from refrigerator
4. Mix with cold water, shrimp bran, ground ginger, white pepper, soy sauce and green onions, mix until paste like
5. Keep both chopped cabbage and meat filling in the refrigerator for later use
6. Take the trader Joe’s pizza dough, prepare the dough according to their instruction
7. Roll into one big roll and cut into 16 equal size dough
8. Roll each small dough into round shape disc
9. Take out the chopped cabbage and meat filling, mix them together
10. Wrap the bun by placing the filling at the center, close the bun by connecting the edge
11. Heat up a pan at medium heat, add 3 tbsp of oil
12. Place the bun in the pan and pan fry until bottom is golden brown
13. Add water and close lid
14. Wait for 8 min
15. Enjoy

3.5.3208