Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Daring Kitchen - Cha Sui Bao

Blog-checking lines: Our Daring Cooks’ December 2011 hostess is Sara from Belly Rumbles! Sara chose awesome Char Sui Bao as our challenge, where we made the buns, Char Sui, and filling from scratch – delicious

When I first read this challenge, I had no idea that it was for one of my favorite Dim Sum buns.  This month's host is from Australia, and they refer to Dim Sum as Yum Cha.  After a few minutes with Google, I had an AHA! moment when I finally figured out what the challenge was for.  BBQ'd pork buns!  

This challenge called for a trip to our local Asian grocery store, where I got the necessary ingredients and set to work.

The dough is a simple flour, yeast and water mixture, with no egg.  There was different recipe, with eggs, that you could use if you wanted to bake your buns, but I much prefer mine steamed.


While the dough was rising, I cooked the pork tenderloin that had been marinating in the Cha Sui sauce.  I would have been quite happy to just stop there and eat the meat as is, but I kept going.

The pork is then finally diced, mixed with onion and another sauce that is thickened.

A tablespoon of meat mixture is rolled inside the dough, and formed into nice little buns.

The buns are then steamed, giving them an unusual but light, bread texture.  I was pleased to note that you could steam them ahead of time and then re-heat them in the toaster oven for lunch the next day.  They weren't as pretty (the deflate a bit), but they were just as tasty.

Be sure to check out the full Daring Kitchen Cha Sui Bao recipe.

7 comments:

shelley c. said...

Excellent job with the challenge - your meat and buns look absolutely delicious.

Brian said...

Great work with the challenge. Everything looks so yummy!

Cher Rockwell said...

I agree with you about wanting to stop right there and eating the tenderloin (I actually had an extra piece, so we had some the next day).
This was fun, wasn't it?

The Garlic Press said...

Nice job! I was also pleasantly surprised at how well the buns reheated!

Nish said...

The buns look perfect! Well done! )

chef_d said...

I actually ate some of the Cha Siu with rice...so good! Your Cha Siu and Baos look delicious!

Mary said...

I did a lot of snacking on the pork too, meaning I didn't have enough for fried rice. The buns look great--I've been having them for lunch all week too.