My Obsession With Dim Sum – Shumai

I was a messy eater as a little kid. In practically every photo of me as a child, my face is dirty, often covered with food. I have no idea why my parents didn’t believe in napkins. The long-term fallout has proven minor, but I guess my infatuation with food started at a young age.

One of the earliest food obsessions I recall was with dim sum, a Cantonese meal of small plates filled with appetizers and dumplings, traditionally eaten as brunch. Many restaurants that specialize in this type of cooking are large halls filled with huge round tables, big enough to sit multi-generational families. In my young age, I recall a sense of chaos as my family settled into the groove of the restaurant followed by a sense of rational calm as the food began to arrive.

In a traditional dim sum hall, diners don’t order from a menu; rather, the food is brought to your table. I loved the way servers would navigate searing hot carts around the restaurant stopping at your table to offer their fare. They would open the lid, scented steam filling the air, to reveal bamboo baskets filled with translucent shrimp dumplings, pork and shrimp meatballs in a thin wrapper (shumai), and slippery rice noodle rolls stuffed with pork or whole shrimp, a heavy dose of sweetened soy sauce poured on top. You pointed to those you wanted and ignored those you decided to skip. There were little dishes with pork spare ribs, meaty, bony nuggets in a salty black bean sauce, and mini spring rolls, three to a serving, the fried wrapper shattering when you took a satisfying bite. A special cart would come to fry turnip cakes right at your table, but they were not for me. I also never partook in the heaping bowls of tripe. It was too chewy for my liking, although my father often savored a bowl on his own. While we didn’t always take them when they were offered, I never minded chicken feet; their flavor was delicious, even if I ended up with what seemed like a mouthful of knuckles. And I always waited for my favorite, steamed barbeque pork buns; the sweet, white dough erupting at the center with chunks of soft, salty pork bathed in a five spice-scented sauce.

There was mystery in the meal that always intrigued me. Before I learned the traditional dishes, I never knew what was going to be inside each wrapper. It was a delight when the servers would cut the string on a sealed packet of lotus leaf sticky rice, for example, which we would then unwrap to reveal the slightly sweet, starchy rice with nuggets of flavorful pork and egg. And you could never determine how much the meal was costing as you pointed to another plate or two on the cart. Some dim sum restaurants would count the plates to figure out your final bill, but more commonly they would put a mysterious mark on what seemed like a random box on a card in the middle of your table as they served you a dish, signifying to someone with more authority than me how much each small plate cost.

A proper dim sum restaurant was not always easy to find when I was young. We had to search out what seemed to me to be hidden spots in Chinatown. Sometimes I would find a place advertising dim sum, only to be disappointed when I had to order off a menu and wait 20 minutes for it to arrive. The food might have been tasty, but there was something missing without the crowds and those carts.

As I grew older, we rarely went out for dim sum. My wife Marci complained of a lack of vegetables (she does have a point, although you can always order a side dish), and an unlimited stream of dim sum treats can definitely not be counted as health food. For years, whenever I visited an Asian market, I would peruse the frozen food aisle to see if I could re-create a dim sum meal at home. I’d buy frozen dumplings, pork buns, and shumai, always to be disappointed with the end result.

More recently I started visiting Chinatown in Flushing, Queens, where I don’t dine on proper dim sum, but I wander the neighborhood stopping at restaurants and food stalls trying new bites from other parts of China. It’s fantastic, with a similar sense of mystery and chaos. And I’ve learned to make at least a few types of dim sum at home – steamed and fried dumplings and shumai in particular – which may not beat a traditional dim sum meal, but are far better than anything from the frozen food aisle of a supermarket.

Pork Shumai

Lately my favorite type of Chinese dumpling has been shumai. These dumplings are not much more than meatballs – another obsession of mine – made of ground pork and shrimp, barely covered in a thin wrapper and steamed.

Traditionally shumai are a combination of pork and shrimp. But as Marci recently developed a shrimp allergy, I now leave the seafood out, although I have included it here as an option. While shumai you find in most restaurants are topped with bright orange crab roe or fish eggs, I have left those out, replacing them with finely diced carrots, as recommended in numerous recipes online. A single green pea on each open-faced dumpling would work just as well, as a colorful garnish.

These shumai freeze beautifully and can be cooked quickly from frozen whenever craving dim sum.

While I certainly cannot claim that shumai are part of my cultural heritage, they are an important part of the food I ate growing up and influence what I cook and eat today. This recipe is based on numerous recipes for shumai in cookbooks and online. I use their lists of common ingredients, adding and subtracting a few, and modifying them to proportions that work for me.

about 2 dozen shumai, 1 hour

3 large shitake mushrooms, dried or fresh, finely minced

1 lb. ground pork, preferably not lean (if using lean ground pork, add a tablespoon vegetable oil)

½ lb. shrimp, peeled and deveined, minced (optional)

2 Tbsp. cornstarch

1 large egg, beaten

3 scallions, minced

½ tsp. sugar

½ tsp. white pepper

½ tsp. kosher salt

1½ tsp. sesame oil

1 Tbsp. grated fresh ginger

1½ Tbsp. oyster sauce

1 Tbsp. soy sauce

1 Tbsp. Shaoxing cooking wine

about 24 round dumpling wrappers (or square wonton wrappers – just cut the corners off)

1 carrot, peeled and very finely minced or 24 frozen peas, optional

soy sauce, Chinkiang (black) vinegar, spicy chili crisp or other chili sauce for serving

1. If using dried mushrooms, soak in enough boiling water to cover for about a half an hour. When reconstituted, cut off stem and finely mince.
2. Make the filling by combining pork, minced shrimp (if using), and cornstarch until well combined in a large bowl. Add beaten egg, minced scallions, sugar, white pepper, salt, sesame oil, grated fresh ginger, oyster sauce, soy sauce, and Shaoxing cooking wine and mix to combine.
3. Cover a sheet pan with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat to hold the dumplings until ready to cook or freeze.
4. Prepare dumplings by placing a tablespoon of filling in the center of a dumpling wrapper. By hand, bunch the wrapper up and around the filling so it covers the edges of the filling, but not the top, squeezing lightly so the wrapper adheres to the filling sides. Place a few pieces of finely minced carrot or one pea in the center of the filling on top, and place the dumpling on the prepared sheet pan. Continue until all the dumpling wrappers are filled.
5. Uncooked shumai can be frozen. Cover the shumai on the sheet pan with plastic wrap and place in the freezer. Freeze until fully frozen, then transfer to a plastic container sealed in a freezer bag until ready to use. (If they are just placed in a bag, the frozen, brittle wrappers are likely to break when jostled around in the freezer.) Do not thaw before cooking.
6. Heat a pot or wok on high with at least two inches of water in it, until boiling.
7. Cut parchment paper to fit your steamer or steamer basket, and cut a handful of holes in parchment paper to allow steam to pass through. Place shumai on parchment paper, not covering the holes and place steamer over boiling water. Cover, reduce heat to medium, and steam for about 8 minutes until fully cooked through. (If cooking frozen shumai, add about 3 minutes to the total steaming time.)
8. Serve hot with soy sauce, Chinkiang (black) vinegar, and/or spicy chili crisp or other chili sauce for dipping.

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