Steamed Vegetable and Pork Buns

Preparation

Mix Dough

Put your yeast in a small bowl and put about a pinch of sugar with it (this will help activate the yeast). Take your warm, room temperature water and mix it in with the yeast. Give it about five minutes until you seem some foam bubbles on the surface. Place all your dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl, give it a rough mix to incorporate together. When yeast is ready, pour it into the large mixing bowl of dry ingredients. Use a silicon spatula, a little bit of elbow grease and give it a good mix until the liquid is incorporated into the flour, it'll start to look like a clumpy, tacky ball.

Knead Dough

Take the dough out of the mixing bowl and start to knead it on a hard surface by continuously folding and rolling the dough onto itself, pressing with both hands to flatten. My grandma always says you have to knead at least 500 times which I've roughly calculated to about 10 minutes of straight kneading. You'll know the dough is ready when it starts to look like a smooth baby’s butt and when you press into it, it should bounce back a little.

Proof Dough

Completely cover your mixing bowl with plastic wrap or a kitchen towel and put it in the oven with the light on or any slightly warm place for your dough baby to take a nap and proof for about 1 to 2 hours or until your dough baby doubles in size.

Prep Cabbage

While your dough is proofing, place cabbage into a large mixing bowl, throw in 1/2 teaspoon of salt and mix with fingers, incorporating salt throughout. Let cabbage sweat out water for about 15 minutes. Meanwhile, put the rest of the filling ingredients into a large bowl.

Make Filling

After the cabbage has sweated out all its water, place onto a thin dish towel or a few layers of thick paper towels and wrap around the cabbage to enclose. Using your hands and brute strength, squeeze out as much excess water from the cabbage as you can through the towel. Transfer cabbage to the rest of the filling mixture and use fingers to mix all that juicy meat mixture goodness together. Use a circular motion with your fingers until the filling looks homogenous and sticky, about 3 minutes. When mixture is done, cover with plastic wrap and set aside in the fridge until the dough is proofed and ready.

Rolling Dough

When your dough is ready, dust a large work surface with flour. Punch the excess air out, give your dough a couple kneads, then place your dough on the work surface. Use a bench or knife to cut dough into quarters. Roll each quarter into a long, even log.*

Cut off the uneven tail ends of the log on both sides, then cut log into 6 equal pieces, each piece should be the size of a large marshmellow - you should have around 24 pieces. Dust work surface with a little bit of flour and firmly flatten each piece of dough with the palm of your hand making a rough circle and set each piece aside. Once all your dough marshmellows are flattened, take a rolling pin with your dominant hand and with a flattened piece of dough in your other hand - roll from the edge to the middle. Use the hand holding the dough to then slowly rotate the dough and continue to roll from the edge to the middle until the dough is flattened to about 1/8-1/4 inch thickness. This will allow the dough to be thicker in the middle and thinner at the edges to hold the meat.

Fold and seal the bao

You can fold the baos however you'd like and have fun with it! For a classic circular fold, place a spoonful of meat in the center of your flattened dough. Then pleat around the meat with small fold, pushing the meat down as the wrapper starts to close in around it. Seal the bao and set aside.

Steam and pan fry the bao

Place small pieces of parchment paper under each bao and place into a bamboo steamer. Use a shallow, wide pot the same circumference as your steamer and fill with water, put the pot on heat and boil. Once the water is boiling turn the heat down to medium-high. Place steamer on top of the pot and put your lid on the steamer and set a timer for 15 minutes for buns to be fully cooked. Once cooked, take your buns out of the steamer and place onto an oiled, non stick pan. Pan fry the bottoms to desired crispiness and then serve.