tueday taste: soup dumplings

Today’s taste is a treat that I dream about, soup dumplings. My experience with these little guys came later in life than I would have liked. No soup dumplings are not just dumplings floating in some broth; the soup is on the inside! The dumpling is soft and perfectly steamed usually with a meat or seafood filling that is similar to the one found in gyoza. The art of eating these has to be perfected as the juice can gush at first bite. It is a balancing act of placing the dumpling on a soup spoon and lifting with chop sticks. These little guys can be tricky to find but any city with a china town ought to have them. One of the most famous places in New York to find them is Joe’s Shanghai. It is worth the hunt; they will leave you warm on the inside and wondering just how they got the soup in there.

On a side note I once tried to make these from scratch and failed miserably. I would have never guessed it but you turn the stock into a gelatin that way you can wrap in the dumpling as a solid. My problem was that the gelatin never melted and there were strange jello chunks inside. It was a disaster but I had so much fun trying so here are some links to recipes: epicurious

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