Steamed Chinese Dumplings (Shu Mai)

From America's Test Kitchen Season 11: Asian Favorites at Home

Every so often we’ll land on an exemplary version of shu mai (steamed Chinese dumplings)—one that boasts a tender, thin skin and a moist, flavorful filling. Our goal was to replicate this version at home.

Our favorite restaurant dumplings rely on coarse-ground pork and shrimp. We started with the pork. To ensure proper flavor and texture, we chose to chop the pork (boneless country-style ribs) in a food processor rather than relying on supermarket ground pork. Supermarket ground pork is often inconsistent—some packages can be lean, while others are riddled with fat and the grind itself is never consistent; one package could be almost pastelike while another might contain visible chunks of meat and fat. To prevent the meat from drying out during steaming, we mixed in a little powdered gelatin dissolved in soy sauce. As for the shrimp, we added that to the food processor, too. Dried shiitake mushrooms, minced cilantro, fresh ginger, and water chestnuts were just a few of the ingredients we relied on to round out our flavorful filling.

For our dumpling wrappers, we chose widely available egg roll skins and cut them into rounds with a biscuit cutter. Once we added the filling and gathered the edges of the wrappers up around each one, we steamed our dumplings in a steamer basket. Served with a hot chili sauce, our dumplings were full-flavored and virtually foolproof.