Directions

• MAKING THE JELLY:
• Blanch the skin for 5 minutes to remove the bad smell.
• Clean it and remove the fat because you don’t want your soup to be too oily.
• Cut it into thin strips.
• Prepare a pot of water (1.8 L of water). Put in your pork skin. Bring it to a boil and then down to low heat. Stew it for 1 hour.
• After 1 hour, add a bunch of spring onion, some slices of ginger, a tbsp of Chinese cooking wine, 2 tsp of sugar, a tsp of white pepper, and a tsb of salt. Keep stewing on low heat for another hour.
• Strain the broth into a container. After stewing, you should have about 400 ml broth left. Put it in the fridge for at least 6 hours. Skin has a lot collagen, which dissolves in the water during stewing. When the temperature goes down, it turns into a jelly.
• Carefully mince the jelly. Make sure there are not big chunks.
• Set it aside.
• MAKING THE FILLING (enough to make 25-30 dumplings):
• You can do this while the jelly is being formed in the fridge.
• Use some white part of the spring onion and ginger to make a sauce. Blend them with 3 tablespoons of water. Strain it.
• Pour the sauce into the ground pork.
• Add white sugar, dark soy sauce, sesame oil, and 1/2 teaspoon of salt.
• Stir it until the pork absorbs all the sauce. Add the vegetables into the meat. And Combine them. You can switch it with other vegetables like water chestnut or radish.
• Last step is to mix it with the minced jelly.
• MAKE THE DUMPLING WRAPS:
• You need about 200 g of high protein flour.
• Add a 1/2 teaspoon of salt and mix it well.
• Pour warm water in 3 parts and mix the flour
• Knead the dough until smooth.
• Cover it and let it sit for 30 minutes.
• Knead the dough again for 5-10 minutes, to squeeze the air out.
• Cover it; let it sit for another 30 minutes.
• Cut the dough in half. Roll and Pull it into a long even strip.
• Cut it into small pieces. Turn it after every cut to get even pieces. Each one should be about 12 grams.
• Sprinkle some flour in case they stick to each other.
• Flatten them with your hand.
• Roll it into a small round wrapper with thick middle and thin edge. The size should be about 8-10cm long across.
• CLOSE THE DUMPLINGS:
• This is the most important step to make them look great.
• Take a wrap and put enough meat so it’s almost full. I put a little bit more than a tbsp.
• Lift one part of the edge and pinch it to make a pleat. Continue all the way around.
• At the end, pinch it together to close the dumpling.
• Normally, each dumpling should have 10-12 pleats in total. Don’t worry too much about this your first time- it will take some practice to make it look perfect.
• STEAM:
• (YOU SHOULD DO THIS AS SOON AS POSSIBLE AFTER CLOSING THE DUMPLINGS)
• Put parchment paper in the steamer
• Leave some space between the xiao long bao,
• Bring the water to a boil, then put the steamer in and let it steam it for 5 minutes on high heat.
• DIPPING SAUCE:
• Mix the shredded fresh ginger, white vinegar and soy sauce