Year of the Pig
I love making Dim Sum to have in the freezer for a quick meal or snack on the fly. It’s a great way to use up kibbles and bits of leftovers and a little filling goes a long way. I decided to make Dim Sum 3 ways for this adventure in preparation for Chinese New Year. I made a basic pork filling with ground pork, cabbage, garlic, ginger, scallions, five spice, hoisin sauce, soy sauce and rice wine vinegar.
I had some won ton wrappers on hand so I just used those instead of regular dim sum wrappers. The won ton wrappers are a little thicker, as they are normally used for deep frying, so the texture was a bit different for the ones I steamed and pan fried, but they still worked well.
I made three shapes, one for each cooking method I planned: fried, steamed and pan fried. Once the filling was mixed together I prepped each wrapper with a brush of water around the edges before placing a tablespoon of filling in the wrapper.
I used a basic triangle fold for two of the three shapes, starting by placing the filling in the center then folding into a triangle. For the first shape which was going to be my deep fried version (above) I made a tail by pulling together the two opposite points of the triangle and wetting them to hold together.
For the second shape I made little envelopes, starting with the basic triangle fold and then folding over the top of the triangle before folding in the sides to shape the envelopes. This version was going to be my pan fried version.
The third shape was formed by first pulling together two opposite corners, then pulling together the remaining two corners. This shape worked quite well for the steamed version of my dim sum.
With just a couple cups of filling I ended up with about four dozen dim sum, and managed to cook all three versions simultaneously to be able to present all three at once for plating. I accomplished this by using my Wolf Convection Steam Oven for the steamed ones (you could also use a steamer basket or an instant pot for the steamed ones). While those were steaming I heated some oil in my wok on my Wolf Multifunction Burner and started sauteeing the envelope shaped ones in a pan on my Wolf Induction Cooktop.
I plated the finished dim sum on a bed of cabbage with scallions and served a dipping sauce of soy sauce, sesame oil, rice wine vinegar and red pepper flakes. Delicious!
