You can find this kind of Shao Mai in most Muslim restaurants in northern China. The ones with lamb filling were always my favorite. When I visited my hometown last time, I introduced this to my son. He immediately fell in love with it.
This recipe makes about 40 Shao Mai. It tastes just like what I remembered.
Original Recipe
Dough
| 300 g | Flour (bread flour is preferred) |
| 120 g | Boiling hot water. (you literally need to boil the water 🙂 ) |
- Mix the flour and water to a very hard dough. Let it rest while preparing the filling. Adjust the amount of water base on your flour.
- I used all-purpose flour. It works!
- In the video, the chef used 100 g water instead. I tried that first, but couldn’t even form the dough. It was just dry crumbs. So I increased the water to 120 g.
Filling
| 1 | 0.9 pound | Ground lamb |
| 2 | 1 tbsp | Minced ginger |
| 3 | 1 tbsp | Soy sauce |
| 4 | 1 tbsp | Tian Mian sauce |
| 5 | 1 tsp | Salt |
| 6 | 0.5 tsp | MSG (optional) |
| 7 | 1 tbsp | Sesame oil |
| 8 | 1/2 cup | Water or stock |
| 9 | 3 | Finely chopped green onions |
| 10 | 1 tbsp | Oil |
- Put 1-7 together in a large bowl. Slowly add water/stock and stir in one direction until the filling is sticky.
- Add chopped green onions and pour the oil on top the onion. Gently mix everything together.
Make the Shao Mai
- Separate the dough to 4 even portions. Work with one portion and keep the rest covered. One portion can make 10 Shao Mai.
- Put a generous amount of corn starch on the countertop. Cut the dough to 10 equal chunks. Roll out them one by one to round thin layers just like dumpling wraps.
- Stack them together. Make sure between every layer, there’s enough corn starch so they won’t stick together.
- Use a thin rolling pin’s edge to press down one side of the wrap pile. Turn the pile until you have pressed down all around about 12 times.
- Put the filling in, squeeze gently at 1cm below the top. It should not be completely closed. You can see a little bit of the filling from the top. This step is not trying to make the dough stick together, but the dough sticks to the filling. So your hand needs to be really gentle, otherwise, the wrap can break easily.
- Boil hot water, steam the Shao Mai for 6 minutes.
