Shumai are quintessential to Cantonese cuisine. It’s difficult to visit any restaurant featuring Cantonese cuisine without spotting these dumplings. They’re easy to purchase frozen in Asian groceries, but also increasingly in Western supermarkets like this Hong Kong Dim Sum Kitchen Siu Mai.
Traditional Cantonese-style shumai typically consisted of ground pork, small whole or chopped shrimp, Chinese black mushroom, scallion and ginger with an outer covering made of a thin sheet of lye water dough. The centre is usually garnished with an orange dot, made of crab roe or diced carrot. That’s the kind you’d find at yum cha but these ones here skip all the trimmings with just ground pork wrapped in dough.
The absence of trimmings like mushrooms and shrimp was evident in these shumai with them being bland without flavour or texture beyond the pork mince. These do not compare to the run of the mill ones at yum cha and would benefit from the addition of Chinese rice wine for flavour and water chestnuts or bamboo for crunch.
This Hong Kong Dim Sum Kitchen Siu Mai contained 10 pieces or 200 g. It was produced in Australia and purchased in Sydney, Australia in 2017.