My Best-Seller Siomai Recipe

It's Christmas Day. And as a present for my readers, I'd like to share with you one of my best home-made recipe. 

I used to cook in a diner and one of our best-sellers is my Pork Siomai. Siomai (also called shaomai or shumai) or pork dumpling is a traditional Chinese food often served as a dim sum. There are different varieties of siomai. There's the poppular pork siomai, the beef siomai, the chicken siomai, the vegetable siomai, and the fast-rising in popularity, the Japanese siomai.


I seldom cook and accept orders now because I had been very busy with a new income-generating project. But I cannot refuse the request of my Sunlife manager, Roger Galvan, to cook some  for the thanksgiving and blessing of our new Sunlife business office in Bacolod last December 7. Also, my very dear friend Nida Timpangco, who came all the way from Basilan to stay with us for a few days, had been prodding me to bake some stuff. Siomai-making was a good substitute activity. It was raining really hard and Typhoon Pablo had been lashing out its powers on our  area during that time. Nida proved to be one efficient assistant cook. 

For the INGREDIENTS:

500 grams regular ground pork (must have considerable amount of fat)
500 grams lean ground pork
1 tablespoon salt
1/2 tablespoon black pepper 
1 cup grated carrots
1 cup grated singkamas (I don't know what's it called in English; Wiki said it's called Mexican turnip)
1/2 cup grated cheese
2 Tablespoons minced garlic
1/4 cup minced red onions
1/2 teaspoon seasoning (sometimes I use Maggi Magic Sarap)
1 teaspoon paprika powder for color
2 tablespoons sesame oil
1 large egg
Siomai wrappers
chopped green spring onions for garnishing

For the SAUCE:
1 cup light soy sauce
Juice of 15 pcs medium-sized calamansi
1 tsp ground black pepper
1 tablespoon brown sugar
2 teaspoon sesame oil
2 teaspoon toasted sesame seeds
2 tablespoon fried chopped garlic

PROCEDURE:

1. In a big glass or plastic bowl, mix all ingredients except the siomai wrapper and the spring onions. Mix with hand until fully combined.
2. Place 1 tablespoon or 15 grams of the siomai mixture in the center of the siomai wrapper. 
3. Hold the siomai in your hand and gather the wrappers around the mixture. Pleat/fold the wrapper around the mixture until you form a basket shape. Pinch the wrapper slightly as you fold it. Press down the mixture using your thumb. Sprinkle a few chopped spring onions on top of the filling for garnishing.
4. To steam, put some water in the lower compartment of your pan. Brush your steamer with oil. Allow the water to boil then adjust fire to let water to just simmer. Place your siomai on your steamer and steam for about 30 to 35 minutes. Allow some space between siomais to prevent them from sticking to each other. 
5. Remove the cooked siomai from steamer and serve with the sauce. 

Siomai mixture on wrappers before wrapping. See wrapped siomai in the background. 

Other optional ingredients that you can use as extenders are Chinese cabbage, cucumber pickles to make the taste a bit interesting, mushrooms and other vegetables of choice. For this one, I added some rabbit's ear mushroom for texture. 

To prepare the sauce, just mix all ingredients together. Add more calamansi juice if more tartness is desired. 

Siomai is best served when hot. This recipe is for home-cooking, so it is best consumed immediately. Commercial preparation of siomai requires use of curing salts and some preservatives to make the product stay longer in frozen storage. I'd post the commercial version of the recipe soon.

I haven't taken any photos of the finished product coz we were in a hurry to finish cooking and deliver it. A lot of my friends and relatives had been asking me for my recipe so here it is. Hope you'd enjoy it too. 

Merry Christmas everyone!