What I miss about living in new york city is the easy access to dim sum and my favorite thing
at dim sum is Har Gow. It's just this perfect little dumpling. It has shrimp inside and
chestnut a little bit of crunch and then this beautiful translucent wrapper it's elegant
it's like the king of dumplings for me I'm gonna attempt to make Har Gow today
I have to think about if it's wise to make Har Gow gluten-free right now Har Gow in its glutenous
glory is all mine if I make it gluten-free I will have to share it with the husband.
Since this is my first attempt in making Har Gow I should have a closer look and see how I
actually made and what ingredients are. So we'll have to procure some Har Gow, find some recipes
for the filling and then figure out how to make a gluten-free Har Gow wrapper. Okay here's how
some commercially made Har Gow looks like look at this beautiful translucent wrapper.
I'm gonna try to make it but I won't try to compete with a professional cook.
I just want to make sure that my Har Gow are on par with the frozen version in the asian market.
The Har Gow filling as mentioned is made out of shrimp so I'm going to start with my shrimp
filling first and these are frozen and I didn't want to do it all by myself and here are my shrimp
they're still a bit frozen so that's going to be interesting. An easier way to defrost the shrimp
is to just run them under ice cold water until all of them are defrosted. So here are now my
shrimp which I made sure they're all defrosted so I'm going to quickly dry off my shrimp
and I have to cut that . Not all of the shrimp are deveined ,you can see it on the blue line
which is running here through the shrimp and I'm not going to fish out the individual veins.
So none of the recipes I looked over really told me how thick to cut them so I'm thinking
a dumpling is pretty small so I probably want to have one or two chunks of shrimp in each of the
dumplings so what I'm going to do is I'm going to cut them probably a centimeter to two centimeters
or which is about half an inch to an inch so let's try that. I'm transferring the chopped
shrimp to a bowl and now I'm getting ready to add water chestnuts I'm gonna open the can of
water chestnuts. I'm gonna drain them so these are about 150 grams which is around a quarter
of the proportion of the shrimp. The idea is when I bite in my Har Gow I taste the shrimp
and have a little bit of a crunch to it which is from the water chestnut but I don't want to have
like a big crunch I want to have a little subtle crunch since these chestnuts are already sliced I
just have to puke them now do you think there's a system no I'm just chopping until that's more
okay. now we're gonna start adding all the different sauces half a teaspoon of white
pepper a pinch of sugar two teaspoons of sesame oil two teaspoons of vegetable oil
I'm gonna mix it up this looks like my heart i'll fill it now to the very top part which is making
the gluten-free Har Gow wrapper when I look at the regular recipes I'm seeing they're using wheat
starch now I have never heard about wheat starch before and I don't know actually the properties so
I will have to look that up later and learn more about it because this is very curious
and down the rabbit hole I go I read somewhere that I can substitute wheat starch for corn starch
now will I be so lucky that it's a straightforward substitution a one to one equal amount or will I
have to experiment more with it let's try to make the dough. I'm going to try two different flour
mixture and see which one is holding better during the steaming process and which will taste better
the first combo will be half corn and half potato starch my other combination will be 1/3 tapioca
1/3 corn starch and 1/3 potatoes. So that's my first variation and that's my second variation.
Both get a pinch of salt and a teaspoon of oil I'm going to add now 80 milliliters of hot
boiling water and that's really important that it's boiling I'm going to add the water to the
first flour combination and start mixing it first with my spatula and then I'm going to knead it
with my hand. I feel the clumps in the dough it's still very sticky so I'm adding more cornstarch
to it. I can feel slowly the clumps disappear while I'm kneading the dough it's getting pretty
smooth. Now the dough feels pretty good so I set it aside now we're gonna go to number two is that
this version is much easier to knead and I don't feel as many clumps in it as in the other dough
and I don't know if it's due to the starches maybe because the water set a little bit longer
that I don't know okay that feels pretty good both those are ready now and I'm getting ready
to make the Har Gow. The proper way now how to roll out a Har Gow wrapper would be to
make small little balls and then roll them out of the cleaver and that sounds way too
complicated and dangerous to me I'm going to use a biscuit cutter instead rolling out the first
dough which has more corn starch I'm definitely noticing that it has much more elasticity while
I'm wrapping the Har Gow I'm also noticing yeah definitely the first dough with more corn starch
makes it much easier for wrapping so after having made a few Har Gow I have now a better idea what
works for me when I'm trying to wrap them so what I learned was I'm going to try to center
my filling the next thing is with my finger bowl I'm going to wet the edges of my Har Gow and I'm
going to take my wrapper here's where the tricky part starts so I'm going to fold it a little bit
and then with my finger I'm going to pinch the edge together then I'm going to do my first weed
and push with this finger here the filling inside stretching the dough a teeny little bit
and I'm making my next fold and I'm going to continue folding the dough wrapper until I have
all of the edges woven now at the end I'm going to take my finger again and pinch the dough in
here to fold it now I'm going to pinch that with my fingers and squeeze the top creating this
edge to my dumpling so it's kind of fun seeing how progressed from this first 10 Har Gow to maybe
60 70 Har Gow later how much better they look oh yeah it's time for lunch though so
it's time to steam the Har Gow and have some to see my dumplings I put some water into a pot
I'm gonna put a Har Gow with the first flower combination on the bottom of the bamboo tray
and I'm going to put the dumplings with the second flower combination on the top tray
I'm going to put the timer now in six minutes
this is number two and this one is number one let's try it out oh yeah that's how I go that's
good the wrapper is really nice and chewy on number one which is normally a good thing for Har
Gow number two's wrapper is much more delicate it's a little bit too chewy for me if I pick a
dough I will use number one first it is chewy but not as much as number two and the other reason why
is it was much easier to roll out and wrap because add more elasticity which definitely helps not
being a dumpling master at all. Let's see how well I am doing against the commercially made Har Gow.
So this is my Har Gow with the second dough that's with the first dough and that's the commercially
made one you can see a little bit of the shrimp shining through my dumplings not quite as much
and certainly the shape is much better than the commercially made Har Gow than mine but my
Har Gow is a little bit more yellow I guess I will have to live with that now flavor-wise flavor-wise
and texture-wise you can definitely compete with the commercial version mission accomplished.
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