Chinese Baked Meat Pies (Siew Pau)

First attempt in making siew pau with some leftover char siew fillings from last week. I cooked a total of more than 1kg of char siew fillings last week to make char siew pau for my family. They were complaining the previous batches were not enough. So, I made about 50 char siew pau and vegetable pau for them. Still, it was barely enough for everyone -.- 

On the bright note, I can now make quite good char siew pau from all the practices. Taste pretty awesome I must say. Reminder to self, must make another batch for photoshoot next round.

Back to this siew pau. I've never thought that it can be harder than making char siew pau. Obviously there are much work involved since it consisted of both the oil and water dough. I thought it is similar to karipap. My water dough was very soft and nice. But the oil dough was a little crumbly. It is supposed to be like that? After folding both doughs together, they are still pliable. Only when I rolled the dough flat to fill in the filling, I had to put a lot of force to roll it. Maybe because of that, the pleats bursted while baking.

The pastry is flaky but taste a bit bland. It doesn't look and taste like those siew pau from the stalls either. Mine was a bit whitish and not as brown as store bought. Maybe I should try a few more recipes to get it right. Overall, it is acceptable but much to improve (pastry wise)

Siew Pau Pastry

Source: mykitchensnippet.com

Oil dough

• 240g flour
• 120g shortening

Mix ingredients together and knead till a soft dough is formed. Rest the dough for 30 mins.

Water dough

• 240g flour
• 60g shortening
• 60g icing sugar
• 120ml water

Mix ingredients together and knead till a soft dough is formed. Rest the dough for 30 mins.

Char Siew Fillings

Source: Adapted from Table for 2 or more with adjustments. Below is my adjusted recipe.

• 1kg pork belly
• 5 tbsp light soy sauce 
• 3-4 tbsp dark soy sauce
• 2 tbsp Chinese rose wine
• 2 tbsp oyster sauce
• 180g sugar
• 1 tbsp cornstarch

* I use Chinese soup spoon for the above tbsp measurements.

Method:

1. Boil pork belly in a pot with 4 cups of water until cooked.
2. Fish out and let it cool. Keep 1 to 2 cups of pork boiling water for thickening later.
3. Cut pork belly into small tiny cubes.
4. Return to the pot and cook until it is fragrant and oil starts oozing out.
5. Add in all the seasonings, except sugar and cornstarch.
6. Cook until it looks dry.
7. Add sugar and cook until sugar melted.
8. Mix cornstarch with the remaining pork boiling water. Add into the pork to thicken the sauce.
9. Cook until the sauce is thicken.
10. Cool and keep in the fridge.

For detailed methods of folding the siew pau pastry and assembly, please refer to mykitchensnippets.com.