Dim-Sum Shrimp Dumpling (Har Gow)

April 13, 2014 23 Comments

Shrimp dumpling is one of the most famous dim sum dishes. I am not familiar with dim sum previously. However in the past two years, I am having so many dim sum dishes and fall in love with those little lovely foods.

Shrimp dumpling has a relatively transparent wrapper and then pink shrimp meat can even be seen from the outside. The transparent wrapper is due to the flour used for the wrapper dough. Instead of usually flour, wheat starch is used and only a small section of flour is added. The more wheat starch used in the dough, the more transparent the wrapper will be.

Boiling water should be used in the dough. In Chinese, we name this way of making dough as 烫面 which mean hot flour. However after stir the water in, let the flour bowl set aside for at least 5 minutes to cool down a little bit.

The traditional version calls for lard in the wrapper dough, if you do not have some or you really do not like lard, replace it with cooking oil. However lard should be added at the very beginning of the kneading process, while cooking oil should be added in the middle size of the process.

Besides for the meat filling part, I skip the pork fat. But you can add some. The meat should be marinated firstly. I highly recommend adding the spring onion just before wrapping the dumpling so that the water in the spring onions can be kept. For how to fold dumplings, check this post: pot-stickers .

Dim-Sum Shrimp Dumpling (Har Gow)

Prep time

20 mins

Cook time

10 mins

Total time

30 mins

One of the most famous Chinese dim-sum dish--shrimp dumplings. Those little shrimp dumplings have transparent outside, fresh and pink inside.

Ingredients

One small section of carrots

For the dough

1 cup wheat starch
a small pinch of salt
2 teaspoons tapioca starch or flour
¾ cup of boiling water
2 teaspoons lard (or around 1 teaspoons of cooking oil)

For the filling

150g raw shrimp, rinsed, tails removed, chopped
1 inch root ginger, finely chopped or grated
2 teaspoons sesame oil
2 teaspoons Chinese cooking wine
2 teaspoons light soy sauce
1 dash of white pepper powder
3 spring onions, finely chopped

Instructions

In a large bowl, combine the wheat starch, tapioca starch and the salt. Slowly stir in the boiling water and you can see there is no dry flour in the bowl. Set aside for around 5 minutes.
Add some lard (or not) and knead the flour into a dough until smooth. If you are using cooking oil, add the oil in the middle of your kneading process. Set the dough aside.
Peel fresh shrimp and devein. Finely mince the shrimp and add cooking wine, soy sauce, pepper powder and chopped ginger firstly. Stir the filling in one direction until you get a paste like texture. Set aside to marinate for around 10 minutes.
Get the dough out and knead around another 4~5 minutes to punch the air out and then roll the dough into a cylinder around 1 inch and then cut it into small sections around 1 inch diameter.
Roll the small sections out to thin round wrappers one by one.
Add chopped spring onions in the shrimp meat and mix well. Wrap the dumplings one by one.
Slice some carrots slices and put the carrots slices firstly in your steamer and then place the dumplings on the carrots slices one by one.
Put the steamer in wok, bring water to a boiling and steam for around 10 minutes.

Notes

You can add some pork fat in the filling.

Nutrition Information

Serving size: 2

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