Har Gau: Chinese Shrimp Dumplings

My first adventure in making dim sum dumplings turned out to be a great success.  Riding the momentum of a successful batch of siu mai, har gau was the next natural option for my exploration into making dim sum.  Har gau and siu mai are dim sum staples and two peas in a pod.  In fact, if you go to a dim sum restaurant that serves out of carts, the cart pusher that has har gau and siu mai will typically announce “har gau siu mai” in one slurred breath.

Dim sum at a restaurant can be great, but it can’t replace the fond memories of my grandma waking up before dawn to hand make a huge spread of dim sum whenever we visited.  My sister’s favorite thing were what we affectionately called “happy faces”.  Essentially, “happy faces” were dumplings filled with ground pork and green onion and named so because they looked like a smile when constructed.  The scratch-made wrappers were most likely made from wheat flour and are essentially the same translucent wrappers used for har gau.  Knowing how well my grandma made those wrappers, I had a lot to live to up.

Because I’m still very new to working with dough in general, the wrappers refused to roll out to my desired thinness.  Every time I would try rolling a piece out, it would quickly shrink back to where it started from.  My inexperience made the wrappers turn out highly questionable and sadly didn’t come remotely close to what my grandma used to make.

Typically the filling has no visible signs of soy sauce but mine obviously did.  Either most restaurants don’t use soy sauce in the filling or use so little that you can’t see it.  The dumplings are also supposed to have nicely pleated seams to seal them.  My “nicely pleated seams” were more like crudely smashed together dough.

 

As you can see, the wrapper turned out too thick.  The wrapper should be translucent.  Overall, it was a passable dumpling wrapper but a terrible har gau wrapper.  The flavor of the dumpling, though, turned out well, albeit a little too soy sauce-y.  One of the hallmarks of great har gau is the clean shrimp flavor that comes through in each bite and this was somewhat muddled with my heavy hand for soy sauce.

Just like the siu mai, I forgot to write down the ratios and technique when I made the har gau.  These measurements are essentially a best guess based on rummaging through Google search results.

Har gau wrapper:

1. 250 g (~1 c) water +16 g (~1.25 T) lard => bring to boil
2. 170 g (~1.33 c) wheat flour + 20 g (~3 T) corn starch => bowl
3. Step #1 + step #2 => mix
4. Step #3 => wait until cool enough to handle, knead until smooth
5. Step #4 => divide into 24 equal portions, roll out into 4” diameter circles

Har gau filling:

1. 1 green onion => fine chop
2. 1” piece of ginger => grate or mince
3. 2 t soy sauce + 1 t sesame oil + 6 g (~1 t) salt + 4 g (~1 t) sugar + 7 g (~1 T) corn starch => mix, dissolve
4. 500 g (~1 lbs) shrimp + 45 g (~0.1 lbs) pork fat + steps #1-3 => mix

Har gau:

1. 1 t filling + 1 wrapper => center filling, moisten 1/2 wrapper edge
2. Dry wrapper edge + moist wrapper edge => seal, pleat
3. Step #2 => parchment, steam, 6-8 minutes

Siu Mai: Chinese Pork Dumplings

The first words in Chinese that I ever learned were most likely “har gau” and “siu mai.”  Whenever my family would go out for dim sum, there were always a few guarantees: jasmine tea, har gau, and siu mai would all be ordered.  Har gau and shiu mai are probably the 2 most popular dim sum items with most families, but they can easily be botched.

Bad shiu mai is typically rubbery and contains a lot of filler like fat and cornstarch.  Sadly, I’ve never had a memorable siu mai in Chicago; well, memorable for the right reason.  I certainly remember having terrible siu mai in Chicago and the dim sum here just doesn’t compare to Southern California or even Houston.

In fact, I had the worst dim sum of my life (and worst meal in recent memory) at the highly regarded Little Three Happiness restaurant in Chicago’s Chinatown.  It’s held in such high esteem that a popular Chicago internet food forum was named after it.  How that place is still in business and why people like it is beyond me, and the online community’s recommendation of it has made me distrustful of most ethnic restaurant recommendations in general.

Good siu mai in my book tends to have a decent amount of fresh shrimp per dumpling rather than just a tiny amount.  Even though it’s a pork dumpling, I enjoy the presence of shrimp as it plays well with the inherent porky fattiness of each bite.  There’s a good reason why many Asian cultures have traditional dishes rooted with a pork and shrimp combination: it just works.  Some people also top their shiu mai with a pea and/or some diced carrots for color which I opted out of due to laziness and because it doesn’t add much flavor.

Traditionally, the outer skin is made from a lye-water dough.  However, I chose to go with premade wonton wrappers as I was confident I would totally mess the skin up if I made it from scratch.  Construction was a bit troublesome at times as some dumplings started to lose their shape, droop, and spill out of the wrapper.

 

Afraid that the wrappers would stick to the bamboo, I placed some all-mighty parchment paper down for the dumplings to rest on.

Like I said, I tend to prefer a decent amount of shrimp in siu mai, but this particular one had a bit much.  The entire top half of the dumpling was all shrimp.  It was still really good, though.  Unfortunately, I’m not 100% sure about the following ratios because I forgot to write down the recipe I followed.  As long as you generally have the base ingredients, it’ll turn out fine.  Just taste and tweak as you go and change the ratios to your preference.

Siu mai:

1. 1” piece ginger => mince
2. 1 green onion => dice
3. Shiitake mushrooms => dice
4. 1 Tbsp soy sauce + 1 Tbsp oyster sauce + 1 tsp sesame oil + 1 tsp Chinese rice wine + 2 tsp sugar + 1 tsp cornstarch + salt => mix
5. 450 g ground pork + 225 g shrimp + steps #1-4 => mix
6. Won ton wrappers => fill with step #5
7. Siu mai => steam until done, ~10-15 minutes