Chinese Steamed Buns

Our family is crazy about Chinese stuffed buns, the ones called baos.  Usually, we'll make a special trip to a restaurant to get some, but every once in awhile, I actually feel like making them at home.  And they're not as hard as you'd think they'd be to make.  For the bun part, I like to use a recipe by Ken Hom which is extremely easy.  For the stuffing part, I just put in whatever is around.  Like ground pork, garlic, ginger, frozen peas, cellophane noodles, carrots, etc.  The only trick, if you're using nonfatty pork loin, is to add some cold water or else the stuffing could get very dry.

Baos can be baked or fried, but mostly, they're steamed.  The ones I cook at home are the steamed version.

Recipe for the Chinese steamed buns
(adapted from Ken Hom's Illustrated Chinese Cookery):

6 fl oz warm water
1 packet of yeast
1 tablespoon of sugar
2 tablespoons of oil (something without much flavor like peanut)
13 oz plain flour

Mix the water, yeast and sugar in a large bowl.  Leave for about 10 minutes, at which point the mixture should be foaming.  (If it isn't, you've got dead yeast and will have to go and get some live ones.)  Add the flour and mix until you have a nice, smooth dough (if it's too sticky, add more flour).  At this point, you can just make steamed buns.  Just roll out the dough into a large snake and evenly divide the snake into as many pieces as you'd like.  Put a little piece of parchment paper on the bottom of each piece and let rise for 30 minutes.  The parchment paper keeps the buns from sticking to whatever tray you've put them on.  And then steam for about 10.  (Uh — you should know to use a steamer of some kind, right?  I have a two-tiered one I got at a Korean store.)

Recipe for stuffing

About 3 - 4 pork loin cutlets, ground
half a carrot, chopped into tiny squares
garlic, minced
a teaspoon of minced ginger
1/4 cup of defrosted frozen peas
3 tablespoons of cold water
1/2 teaspoon of salt
lots of pepper
cooked cellophane noodles, finely chopped

Now the secret here is to make sure the pork loins are ground to a paste.  I do it in a small food processor.  Add all the ingredients and mix extremely well with your hands.  You MUST use your hands.  It will be gooey, but that's what you need to have a moist stuffing.

Now to assemble the baos, take a small chunk of dough and swirl it around both palms until you have a rough ball.  And then flatten it, again with your palms.  Unto the little pancakes, add enough stuffing to fill about 85% of the pancake.  Now, very gently, pull the dough up and around the stuffing, going around and around.  You should get little rough points meeting up at the center.  Pinch together the points and twist.  Now you have a bao!

Grease the bottom of your steamer (I find Pan pretty good).  Fill the steamer with the baos, not crowding them too much, as the baos will rise.  Let rise for about 20 minutes. And then steam for about 10 minutes.