Dry-Steamed Siu Mai 干蒸烧卖

Dry-Steamed Siu Mai (干蒸烧卖) is the pork-and-shrimp dumpling of Cantonese dim sum, often shortened to ganzheng (干蒸, 'dry-steamed') and also called shrimp siu mai (虾肉烧卖). It is eaten at yum cha (饮茶, the Cantonese tea-house meal) in Guangdong and is a popular yum cha dim sum in Hong Kong restaurants, where the siu mai served is this Cantonese kind, made mainly with pork, shrimp and shiitake mushroom.

How it is made

The filling is chopped pork, pork fat and shrimp, wrapped in a thin, bright yellow skin and steamed. Li Xinqiang (李新强), head dim sum chef at the Guangdong Yingbin Hotel (广东迎宾馆), told New Express that the dough is kneaded and rested, then rolled thin but slightly thicker at the centre, so the base does not split and the rim forms a frilled 'lotus-leaf edge'. He avoids pork belly and rump as too tough, keeps fat to about a quarter of the filling, stirs the mixture in one direction until it turns sticky, chills it, and adds white spring onion just before wrapping. Each dumpling takes about 20 grams of filling. Since the 1990s a dab of crab roe has often topped the dumpling; to save cost, fish roe or even carrot now stands in for it.

Where it comes from

Guangzhou Daily traces the dumpling to the shaomai of the north in the Yuan dynasty, which Cantonese cooks reworked. It is one of the 'Four Heavenly Kings' (四大天王) of Cantonese dim sum with har gow (虾饺, shrimp dumplings), char siu bao (叉烧包, barbecued-pork buns) and egg tarts. According to the paper, the title goes back to the first national cooking competition in 1983 in Beijing's Great Hall of the People, after which Chen Xun (陈勋), the only judge from Guangdong, proposed these four as the representatives of Cantonese dim sum.

How it is eaten

In Hong Kong, the dry-steamed siu mai of the restaurants is a different thing from the fish siu mai (鱼肉烧卖) of street snack shops, which are smaller, filled with minced fish in yellow wonton wrappers, skewered on bamboo sticks and dipped in soy sauce and chilli oil. A restaurant variant, three-star siu mai (三星烧卖), puts a piece of shiitake, pork tripe or shrimp on the pork filling, one of each kind in every basket.