虾饺 Shrimp Dim Sum
Dumplings 饺子 are in the blood of most Chinese, but there is a deep divide between wheat wrapper dumplings in the north and rice wrapper in the south (way south of Shanghai toward Wenzhou温州 and Guangdong 广东). As a child growing up in northern China, an important rite of passage is learning how to press the perfect wheat dumpling wrappers by hand but I never quite managed to mastered the skill. Making rice wrappers for Cantonese dim sums, most famously represented by shrimp dumplings (虾饺 or “HarGow” in Cantonese) has been a feat that eluded me for years. My first attempt in our San Francisco apartment ended in throwing out everything, wrapper and stuffing, after hours of frustration.
What now? Rice is naturally gluten free and becomes an important part of CC#2’s diet. Right before Christmas, I saw a flaming orange “dumpling maker“ being advertised on Facebook, seemed to be the perfect tool for making rice wrappers. Then, I saw a click bait on Youtube promising stretchy rice dough (without gluten) to prevent rice dum sum wrappers from cracking. Guess this guy knows the root cause of downfalls by us northerners. I had to try again!
CC#1 and CC#2 were both home and happily joined my venture. CC#2 turned out to have a knack for expertly using the dumpling maker to churn out perfect wrappers and dumplings. The Youtuber is a dim sum chef from Boston who is actually quite legit. He shared two tricks for making pliable rice hagao wrappers: The first trick calls for adding boiling hot water to a combination of fine rice flour and corn starch, which did not work for me. The second trick (rescue for the first one) is to steam about 1/3 of the dough for a 8-10 minutes before kneading it back into the regular dough. His recipe also called for adding some tapioca gruel made with boiling water to the dough, which I followed but suspect it it did not add much. Just made more dough. I will try again next time without the tapioca.
Stretchy Pliable Rice Wrappers 虾饺皮:
Stir 150g wheat Starch 澄面粉, 50g corn starch, and 15g sugar in mixing bowel of KitchenAid Mixer. It is a little questionable whether wheat starch is really gluten free but we will ignore that for this recipe.
Boil 350g water and pour immediately into flour mixture, stir well till no dry flour remains but the dough looks partially transparent
Set aside for 5-10 minutes before adding another 50g of corn starch
Using paddle at medium speed to incorporate the corn starch well
Add 15g of canola or vegetable oil and continue to mix with paddle until smooth ball form
Take 1/3 of dough, flatten, and steam in bowl over boiling water for 8-10 minutes
Knead steamed dough into remaining dough
Roll 1/3 of dough into a long rope and cut into small pieces of dough, about 10g each for pressing into wrappers
Be sure to use an oil soaked paper towel to grease the dumpling maker’s surfaces to aid release
Optional: Add 80g of boiling hot water into 50g tapioca flour and mix till it forms a sticky mess. Then mix this with 2/3 of the non-steamed dough before adding the 1/3 steamed dough and mix for 2 minutes. Finally add another 80g of corn starch to make the dough dryer. This optional addition makes for quite a bit of dough!
HarGaw Stuffing 虾饺馅 :
Ingredients：
250g peeled shrimp or 300g shrimp with shells
15g lard
40g minced pork
5g salt
8g sugar
5g of chicken concentrate
8g corn starch
Large pinch of white pepper
50g red onion, or asparagus, or green peas
5g sesame oil
Instructions:
Cut shrimps in half and use dull end of knife to lightly pound on shrimp pieces a few times. Take care to keep full pieces
Dice onions or blanch and dice asparagus into small pieces, set aside
Using KitchenAid mixture and paddle, mix everything from shrimp to corn starch at medium speed for 2 minutes until cohesiveness reached
Add white pepper, then vegetables and sesame oil, and mix for 30 seconds
Assemble dumplings as shown below, and steam finished dumplings for 6 minutes and enjoy!
CC#2 hard at work