Name: Siew Mai
Yield: Serves 4–6
Cuisine: China
Ingredients: Light soy sauce 1 Tbsp; Pork shoulder or leg meat with some fat 210 g (7½ oz); Fresh prawns (shrimps) 180 g (6½ oz); Fresh crab roe or shrimp roe (optional); Lettuce or green vegetable leaves as needed; Sugar ½ tsp; Salt ¼ tsp or to taste; Sesame oil ¼ tsp; Potato starch 1 tsp; Rice wine 1 tsp; Ground white pepper ¼ tsp; Round wonton skins, about 10-cm (4-in in diameter) 25–28 skins

Preparation info

Serves
4–6

Difficulty
Medium

Appears in

Chinese Heritage Cooking

By Christopher Tan and Amy Van

Published 2018

About

This classic dim sum item is so spare and simple that only the best quality ingredients should be used. Hand-chopping the pork and prawns to a coarse mince is crucial to achieving a juicy mouthfeel; machine-minced pork binds too tightly, making the siew mai dense and tough. Using pork that is too lean leads to similarly dense and tough results, so be sure your pork is marbled with a little fat.