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. If you enjoyed this video learning how to make Har
Gow. Please subscribe to my channel and check the bell to get notifications about any upcoming
video thanks so much I see you next week bye.
Leave a Reply