Dear Kitchen,
I had these amazing French Onion Soup Dumplings at Stanton Social. They were bite-sized, served on toothpicks, and either baked or fried. But what stumps me is how they were able to keep the onion soup inside the dumpling! Any idea how they accomplished this? And does anyone have a recipe?
Thanks!
Laila
Ahhh, soup dumplings. I remember my first meal at Joe's Shanghai in Chinatown when I'd first moved to New York. I was on top of the world. As long as you don't have too many people at the table, there are always more than one for you. You pick each one up as if it were a little miracle. And it is a little miracle - how do they get the soup to stay inside.
My guess is that the "soup" is actually in some kind of hardened form, probably frozen into a cube, which is wrapped in the dumpling skin and then cooked. Usually soup dumplings are boiled or steamed. If you sensed a crispy exterior, they were probably steamed or boiled, and then finished in the oven, or gently pan-fried.
Copyright © 2008 Apartment Therapy
I believe soup dumplings are made with some sort of aspic (a jellied soup) which melts when the dumplings are steamed...
In making stock, if you boil the bones long enough, you extract gelatin. When warm, the stock is liquid, and the gelatin is not really noticable, except for having smooth, rich mouth feel. But when chilled, even at room temperature, it is firm like jello, and can be cut and placed inside the dumpling. I know of a few dumpling places that use this technique.
They make the soup with beef stock, which when chilled jells into a firm state. This is then cut into cubes and wrapped in the dumpling wrapper. When the dumplings are steamed, the jelled soup melts... voila.
Maggie,
Yes, the pork dumplings (ala Joe's Shanghai) are probably made with jellied pork (aspic) - there was a nice article in the April 2004 Saveur which explained this process, however, it is not available online. We'll just have to experiment!
Thanks for the responses. After posting this question, I did come across a recipe here:
http://habeasbrulee.com/2006/03/23/french-onion-soup-dumplings
I haven't tried it yet, but will let you know how it goes!
Sounds like a French variant of Shanghainese xiao long bao dumplings. I found a link that shows how to make the original version (which is absolutely delicious too!)
Oops, here's the URL.
http://www.galaxylink.com.hk/~john/food/cooking/shanghai/xiaolongbao.htm