Make Soup Dumplings Like A Chinese Restaurant
About this video
This video takes viewers into a home kitchen where the art of making soup dumplings is broken down into simple, manageable steps. The atmosphere is warm and instructional, with the cook demonstrating how to prepare the dough, fill the wrappers with savory broth and pork, and pleat each dumpling by hand. What makes this video special is its focus on achieving the same delicate texture and rich flavor found in Chinese restaurants. Viewers will see the careful technique behind creating the signature soup-filled center, from jelling the broth to sealing the dumplings without leakage. It is an ideal watch for anyone who loves Chinese food and wants to recreate this iconic dish in their own kitchen, offering both practical tips and a glimpse into the patience and skill behind homemade dim sum.
Video transcript
If you don't know how the soup gets inside a soup dumpling, you will soon, because we're about to make them completely from scratch. Soup dumplings are made of just three simple things. You've got your dough, which you use to wrap the dumplings. Then you've got your filling, which can be any kind of meat or vegetable mix. And then, of course, you've got the soup, which is where we're going to start. To build that pork flavor in our soup, we start with some pork skin and a couple pork bones, which we're then going to cover up with cold water and bring to
a boil. And once it comes to a boil, remove the bones and skin and bring them to the sink to give them a good rinse in cold water. You can discard the dirty water. We use that to clean the bones. Then, we need to clean off our pork skin. You know, that slightly sticky texture that you get in the broth of a soup dumpling? Well, this skin here is filled with tons and tons of gelatin, but we need to, first, remove any extra little bits of fat that might be on there. Similar to cleaning the bones, this will give you a much more pure soup dumpling soup. The
last step is to cut this into strips, and it makes it a lot easier if you roll it up like this, instead of trying to cut the skin flat on the board. Is it just me or do these look a little bit like white gummy worms? These are, now, going to go into a heavy bottomed stock pot along with the pork bones, some Jinhua ham, a few slices of ginger, some green onions, but just the bottom white part, some Shaoxing wine, and a couple pods of star anise. Cover this now with five cups of water, doing your best to make sure everything is as submerged as possible,
and then bring this to a boil. Then reduce to the lowest simmer possible and let this cook for three hours uncovered. Fast forward three hours and we have our beautifully milky soup. Cooking the bones for so long is what allows us to get such a beautifully rich broth. At this point, we'll strain off our soup, with the goal being to get one and three quarters cups. But, if it's reduced too much, you can just add a little splash of water. I'll pour this onto a small tray and carefully transfer it to the fridge, where it's going to set into its jello form.
To make our dough, we'll go into the bowl of a stand mixer with some all purpose flour, a pinch of salt, and some nice warm water. And then, using chopsticks, I'll start to mix until a shaggy dough forms. You don't have to make your own dough. You could easily go buy dumpling wrappers from a grocery store, but I thought it'd be fun to try. Once we have our shaggy dough that looks something like this, we'll set up our electric mixer with a dough hook attachment, and then we mix. Oh! We'll let this mix for 5 to 10 minutes or until the dough becomes very
soft and smooth. Here we go. Look how soft and smooth it is. We're going to shape this up now into a nice ball. And then we'll cover this up in plastic wrap and let this rest while we make our filling. I'm gonna sit him right up here. He'll be watching to make sure I do everything right. For our filling, to a bowl, we're going to add some ground pork as well as some minced ginger, chopped green onions, some minced garlic, a splash of soy sauce, a sprinkle of sugar, some white pepper, Sichuan peppercorn powder and a pinch of salt. Mix this up by hand
until fully combined. It's going to start smelling really good now. Then add a splash of water and mix again for about two more minutes. Once in a while, even picking up the filling and throwing it hard into your bowl, to help that water really absorb. It's really fun, but just do your best to make sure you don't miss the bowl. When you're finished with this process, your filling is going to start to look lighter and fluffier. Almost a little whipped. Now we'll add in some sesame oil, then continue mixing, throwing it into the bowl a couple more times,
which helps to get the filling as tender as possible. Finally, add in some neutral oil and then give it one last gentle mix. No need to throw your filling anymore. And your filling is done. And now it's time to add in the soup. As you can see here, this has completely solidified. So many people are confused how you get the soup in a soup dumpling, and now you know. We turned our soup into a jello so we can combine it easily with our filling. But, then, when we go to cook our soup dumplings, that jello is going to melt back down into a soup. To spread our
jello evenly into the filling, we're going to push it through a potato ricer, which isn't the most beautiful way to do it, but it's very, very efficient. If you don't have a potato ricer, go ahead and just chop it up really finely with a knife. The final step of our now complete filling is to get in there with your hands and mix this up as gently as you possibly can. You also want to do this quickly, because, especially if you have warm hands, you can literally start melting that jello back down into a soup right in the bowl, which we don't want. With
our filling finally complete, we'll cover it with plastic wrap and places in the fridge for three hours or preferably overnight. By now, our dough has had plenty of rest, so let's roll it out into our dumpling wrappers. I'll start by rolling it out into a nice smooth log and then cut it into three even portions. Then I'll roll each of these out just a little bit more. Oh look, we made a hot dog. And then I'll grab one piece to work with and cover up the rest so it doesn't dry out. Your goal now is to cut off 14 gram pieces of your dough, and you can use
a scale to measure, if you want, or you can try to look like a pro soup dumpling chef and try this technique where you eyeball it and use your hands to rip off one portion at a time. But, I will admit, this is a little tricky if you're doing it for the first time, so you should, also, feel free to just cut them into portions with your knife, 'cause, chances are, they'll look a lot better this way, just like mine did. To turn each portion into a dumpling wrapper, the first step is to roll it into a ball, then press it out into a small circle shape like
this. Get it as perfectly circular as you possibly can here, and then using just the tiniest dusting of flour, you want to hold the center with your thumb and pointer finger while you use the rest of your fingers to spin it around as you roll the edges. What you're looking for is a dumpling wrapper with a slightly thicker center and really nice thin edges. Once you've made each wrapper, place that under the towel along with the other unrolled portions so that that doesn't dry out either. I just remembered this story I wanted to tell you about this
restaurant I used to work at in California. This is the best photo I could find of me working at that restaurant, but what I remember is that their most famous dish at the time was this lobster soup dumpling, and I had to work on making part of those soup dumplings every single morning when I came into the restaurant. But, the chef was very intense when it came to the filling. So, I'll tell you the crazy part once we get to actually adding in our filling. After a bit of rolling here are my dumpling wrappers. And this means we're ready for the final
assembly. Grab your filling. It's all nice and cold from the fridge and smells amazing. Add a light dusting of flour to your work surface, then grab one of your dumpling wrappers and use your fingers to press all around the edges. Now place it in the center of your palm and then use a spoon or any kind of tool like this to spread it out into a circle. You see that nice mix of the soup jello with all our meat? That is what's going to give us the perfect juicy and balanced soup dumpling. Now comes the hard part. Folding and pleating the soup dumplings so
they end up looking something like this. In one hand, use your thumb to press down on the filling while you use your pointer finger to support the underside of the wrapper and with the other, use your thumb and pointer finger to fold the wrapper over itself, then pinch, and then after giving it a little stretch, repeat that same process over and over again with the goal of getting somewhere between 14 and 18 folds. And if you can get 18, apparently that's the lucky number. But, I'm too lazy and hungry to count this, so please help me out in the comments
below. I recently went to Shanghai, where soup dumplings were invented, and was watching these chefs fold and shape these soup dumplings. You can see that they've clearly been doing this for a long time. So, if you are trying this on your own at home, just know that it takes a while to learn and it's definitely not easy to do right. Oh, I almost forgot to tell you the rest of my story. Basically, when I would come into work in the mornings, I would work on the soup dumpling fillings, and I had to portion and weigh the filling into these perfectly sized
balls. And when the chef came in each afternoon for work, he would take that tray and weigh a couple of balls of filling. And if they weren't all in the tiny range of weights that he was looking for, guess who got in trouble? It was crazy. But it's also, probably, why he has a three Michelin star restaurant. Anyways, I'm hungry, so I say we get to cooking. We'll cook our dumplings using this steamer basket, and if you don't have a steamer basket, just look up online how to make a makeshift one. The only thing we need to prepare this is to add a sheet of
perforated parchment paper, and then it's ready to go. Place it carefully over some boiling water. But, it's important that we're really careful, 'cause one of the worst ways to burn yourself in the kitchen is hot steam. We'll add in our soup dumplings spaced out evenly. I made enough soup dumplings here that I need a multi-level steamer basket to cook them, and then place on your lid and set a timer for six minutes, if they haven't been frozen, and eight minutes, if they have been frozen. And now I'll go grab a pair of chopsticks, 'cause it's almost
time. Let's see how they look. Uuh, they're beautiful. When I went to Shanghai, in China, and had a soup dumpling, there was so much soup inside that I actually choked on the first soup dumpling I ate there. I've sort of tried to create this recipe in that exact same way, because, normally, I feel like you don't get soup dumplings anymore that are that soupy, and that's kind of the whole point. Watch carefully. There's a very specific and correct way to eat a soup dumpling. We pick it up, then we bite it, then pour out all the juice into the spoon, drink
the juice. Packed, packed, packed full of flavor. It's savory. It's juicy. It's a little sweet. It's why I love soup dumplings. But, with the rest here, dip it now into some black vinegar that's got thin sliced ginger in there, and then... Got to be one of the best things I've ever eaten. If anyone needs me, I'll be burning my tongue on, like, ten more of these.
