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AI-generated photograph: Eight small half moon pork dumplings in a deep black ceramic bowl, glossy with dark sweet soy sauce and streaks of red chilli oil, a dab of white garlic paste on top, seen from directly above

Home · Recipes · Zhōng shuǐjiǎo, pork dumplings in sweet soy and chilli oil

Sichuan · Soups and starters

Zhōng shuǐjiǎo, pork dumplings in sweet soy and chilli oil

pork dumplings · sweet soy · chilli oil

AI-generated photograph

Zhōng shuǐjiǎo are the little boiled pork dumplings of Chengdu, served in a dark, sweet soy sauce with chilli oil and raw garlic. They are warm rather than fierce, and the sweet sauce is what makes them different from every other dumpling.

Contains: cereals containing gluten, soya, sesame and sulphur dioxide and sulphites, as written. Gluten is in the dumpling wrappers (wheat flour), the light soy sauce (made with wheat) and the Shaoxing wine. Soya is in the soy sauce. Sesame is in the sesame oil. Sulphites are in the Shaoxing wine. Some dumpling wrappers also contain egg, and shop chilli oils can contain soya, sesame or peanuts, so check both labels.

Ingredients

  • 250g minced pork (not extra lean)
  • 1 thumb-sized piece fresh ginger (about 20g), finely grated
  • 2 spring onions, very finely chopped
  • 1 tablespoon Shaoxing wine (Chinese rice wine for cooking)
  • 5 tablespoons light soy sauce (1 for the filling, 4 for the sauce)
  • Half a teaspoon fine salt
  • A quarter teaspoon ground white pepper
  • 24 round dumpling wrappers (jiǎozi pí, thin wheat flour circles, sold frozen in Chinese supermarkets), defrosted
  • 3 tablespoons soft dark brown sugar
  • 1 star anise
  • 3 tablespoons Sichuan chilli oil with its sediment (hóngyóu, red oil: oil infused with chilli flakes)
  • 2 garlic cloves, crushed to a paste
  • 1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil

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Let's cook

  1. Make the sweet soy sauce. Put 4 tablespoons of the soy sauce, the brown sugar, the star anise and 4 tablespoons of water in a small pan. Simmer gently for 5 minutes until it is a little syrupy, then take out the star anise and leave it to cool. It thickens as it cools.
  2. Make the filling. In a bowl, mix the pork, ginger, spring onions, Shaoxing wine, the last tablespoon of soy sauce, the salt and the white pepper. Add 3 tablespoons of cold water a spoonful at a time, stirring hard in one direction with chopsticks or a spoon, until the mixture turns sticky and pale. This keeps the filling juicy.
  3. Fill the dumplings. Hold a wrapper in your palm, put a heaped teaspoon of filling in the middle, wet half the edge with a fingertip of water, fold it into a half moon and press the edges firmly together to seal, pushing out any air. Keep the finished ones on a floured tray under a clean tea towel.
  4. Bring a large pan of water to a rolling boil. Add half the dumplings and stir gently so they do not stick to the bottom.
  5. When the water comes back to the boil, add 100ml cold water. Do this twice more. The dumplings are cooked after about 5 minutes, when they float, the wrappers look translucent and the filling feels firm when pressed. Cut one open: the pork should be white all the way through with no pink, or 75C on a thermometer.
  6. Lift them out with a slotted spoon and cook the second batch the same way.
  7. Divide the dumplings between 4 warm shallow bowls. Spoon over the sweet soy sauce, then the chilli oil, and top each bowl with a little of the raw garlic paste and a few drops of sesame oil. Mix at the table.

Tips

  • Uncooked dumplings freeze well. Freeze them spaced apart on a tray, then bag them, and cook from frozen for 2 minutes longer.
  • Keep any leftover cooked dumplings in the fridge for 1 day and reheat them in boiling water until piping hot all the way through.

Swaps

  • Milder: halve the chilli oil and add a spoonful of the chilli sediment only.
  • No pork: use minced chicken thigh, cooked to 75C in the same way.

Our own recipe. The photograph is AI-generated.

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