Chinese New Year
Red-Braised Pork Belly and Shrimp Dumplings
We were browsing the internet for recipes and came across Bon Appetit’s, 3 Recipes from Simone Tong’s Chinese New Year Menu article. We decided the Red-Braised Pork Belly and Shrimp Dumplings would be this week’s recipe. Neither one of us has ever made anything like this and immediately felt the excitement of trying something new. As we read through the ingredients, we knew we wouldn’t be able to get some of these items at our local grocery store. To the Asian market we went and pick up the ingredients neither of us had heard of. We were eager to try the Shaoxing wine and black vinegar.
Our next stop was our local market to pick up the rest of the ingredients. The costs for these recipes were a higher mostly due to the fact we almost didn’t have any of the pantry items in stock. We spent about $35 in the Asian market and another $30 at our local market. But, its a holiday! So we headed off to the Let’s Cook That kitchen…
We started off, making the pork belly. Going over the instructions there was nothing too intimidating so we tackled it head on. We only ran in to one major issue, the instructions said to blanch the pork for five minutes and transfer pork to paper towel and drain. Next, you are to wipe out the pot and make a caramel then put pork back in to pot and coat.
Now, if you have never made caramel before, you should know it gets extremely hot, like really, really hot and does not react well to water. We knew this going in but figured it was a small amount of caramel we didn’t think it would be a problem. Well, we were wrong, the caramel reacted to a little water left on the pork and erratically splashed everywhere. Luckily, we were anticipating it so nobody got burned. My note would be to please make sure your pork is extremely dried off and move quickly. Once the drama was over we continued with the rest of the recipe.
We were worried braising the pork belly would be too fatty or braising them would make the fat on the pork mushy but boy were we wrong. Wow, these came out amazing. This dish had so much flavor, the ginger slices had a mild flavor and still had a little crunch, the pork was tender and delicious.
Then we dove into preparing the dumplings. We were intimidated with the idea of building a dumpling since we have never made them before. The recipe requires quite a few ingredients and you end up only using a small amount of each item. (What are we going to do with all this potato starch?) With that said, we quickly incorporate all the ingredients and quite easy to get the filling made. It’s was building dumpling time!
We decided just to go for it and right off the bat, it was much easier than we thought it would be. According to the recipe, you are suppose to use your finger to wet one side of the dumpling wrapper. We ended having to wet the entire circumference of the wrapper. After a couple of test dumplings and to our surprise, they really started to look like dumplings. We were proud of how they were looking. If you haven’t attempted to make dumplings because of the difficulty, you should give it a try. You might find out how easy it really is. Worse case scenario, you can call them “test” dumplings like our first few. Once built, we cooked them as instructed and they came out looking just like the picture.
As beautiful as they came out, we did have some issues with the flavors. There is an overwhelming ginger flavor in both the dumpling and the dipping sauce. If you normally add extra ginger, you won’t need to change anything, but we would most likely cut the ginger by half in the dumpling filling. The shrimp’s mild flavor just couldn’t hold up to the boldness of the ginger. The sauce was delicious, a little spicy, but we enjoyed it. The dumplings really came together quickly, if we were to prep a little the night before we wouldn’t hesitate to make this during the week. Fun, easy and delicious dish!
Ratings:
Red-Braised Pork Belly
Shrimp Dumpling
If you would like to try this recipe yourself, click here for full recipe and instructions and check out Bon Appetite website.