Shengjian Mantou 生煎包

Just for the Christmas Holidays, I tried making this Chinese Style Shengjian Mantou as I was craving it while watching Youtube videos and I thought I'll make it right away following the recipes on Youtube.



You will need:

Ingredients for marinating mince pork filling:
Pepper
salt
water
soy sauce
sesame oil
ginger
spring onion
cooking oil

For the dough:
400g Plain flour
40g sugar
4g yeast
200g warm water

Method:

1. First, to create the dough, add in the sugar and yeast and warm and stir it till it dissolves. Then let it sit for 5-10mins. Add in the plain flour and using yours and spatula, knead it till a dough forms and let it rise for 45 mins to 1hr.
2. Meanwhile, marinate the meat using appropriate amounts of the ingredients above. Make sure you add the water little by little at intervals. By adding little bit of water to the mince, it makes it filling more juicy. Stir the meat with utensils until it forms almost like a "paste".
3. When the dough is ready, knead and fold the dough a few times to let the air out and folding it creates more texture. Then divide the dough into the size of a golf ball.
4. Press the golf ball-sized dough flat on your palm while keeping it circular in shape, and add a tbs of mince filling in the center. Then starting at any point of the circular edge, go around the whole circumference picking up the edges and gather it with your fingers towards the middle using pinching motions. Make sure the mince filling is well-sealed inside. Repeat the same with the rest of the douh.
5. Add some oil to a frying pan and let the buns sit in the pan. Fry in pan for 3 mins with lid on and (optional, turn over and fry the other side for another 3 mins).
6. Add 1 cup of water to pan, then cover the pan with a lid for 8-10 mins.
7. Alternatively, you can choose the steam cook version for a healthier option. To do this, add in some hot water in a rice cooker or wok with a steam rack in it. Then place the buns in the steam rack and let it steam for 12-15mins.