Food Folk Tales: Shumai
Author & Photographer: Isabella Sun
Shumai is a traditional Chinese dumpling dish that originated in Northern China. Since its conception, it has become a staple cuisine in China as well as nearby regions. As its popularity spread across Asia, shumai has evolved into many variations by adopting regional culinary attributes. Among the different varieties, the Cantonese shumai is perhaps the most well-known in the Western world. The popularity of dim sum in the West has familiarized many Westerners with these elegantly shaped steamed dumplings. However, what many don’t know is that the history of shumai actually dates back to the Ming Dynasty. Like many other cultural dishes, shumai also has a fascinating tale behind its origin.
Legend has it that at the end of the Ming Dynasty, there were two brothers who ran a baozi (Chinese steamed bun) restaurant together. All was well in the brothers’ lives until one day, the older brother decided to get married. The brother’s new bride was not happy with her husband’s meager income and persuaded him into procuring full ownership of the baozi restaurant. When the older brother became the only official owner of their restaurant, the younger brother was demoted to a mere cook at his own shop. Everyday, he struggled to make ends meet, so he devised a plan to earn some extra cash— he would use the ingredients leftover from their regular baozi buns to make thinly wrapped, open-faced buns. He then begged his older brother to allow him to keep the earnings the restaurant makes from selling these open-faced buns. The older brother, not recognizing the ingenuity of his sibling’s new creation, accepted the request.
Immediately, customers became intrigued by the strange appearance of this new dish. The younger brother’s new dish became an instant hit in the restaurant. As more people heard of these open-faced buns, its popularity grew, and shumai gradually became a famed delicacy in Asian cuisine.
Traditional Cantonese shumai are open-faced steamed dumplings usually stuffed with ground pork and shrimp, and garnished with tobiko (fish roe) or carrots. The dumpling wrappers, unlike the Northern variety, are yellow in appearance due to the addition of egg into the wrapper dough. When you bite into the thin wrappers, your mouth is immediately filled with the delicious juices that flow from meat filling. The savory pork combines perfectly with the umami of shrimp and tobiko. These delicate, little dumplings are not only beautiful, they taste heavenly as well.
Ingredients:
20 Shumai wrappers
⅔ cup shrimp
⅔ cup ground pork
¼ cup shiitake mushrooms
⅛ cup carrots
Tobiko (Optional)
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp cooking wine
1 tsp oyster sauce
1 tbsp sugar
½ tsp salt
½ tsp pepper
Directions
1. Dice up the shrimp into small pieces. Finely chop up mushrooms and carrots.
2. Combine pork, shrimp, mushrooms, and carrots in a bowl. Leave some carrot pieces for later use. Mix the ingredients until they turn into a tenderized paste.
3. Add in the sauces and spices. Mix the ingredients again until everything is well-combined.
4. Cover the bowl of filling with plastic wrap and place it in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. This allows the filling to marinate in the sauces and develop its flavors.
5. Take a piece of wrapper. Spoon around 2 tablespoon of filling on top of the wrapper. Shape your left hand into an “O” and squeeze the wrapper around the filling. The filling should just pack to the top of the wrapper. You can press down the filing with your opposite hand to level it with the wrapper. Place the finished shumai aside and repeat the process with the remaining ingredients.
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6. Top each shumai with some carrot pieces and tobiko (roe) for decoration.
7. Line a steamer with parchment paper to prevent the shumai from sticking to the bottom. I used a bamboo steamer, but any steamer would work. Place the shumai into the steamer, make sure they’re evenly spaced. Steam on high heat for 5-8 minutes until the meat becomes pink in color and has reached an internal temperature of around 165ºF.
