Duanwu Dumpling Recipe

 

The Duanwu Festival, also known as the Dragon Boat festival or rice dumpling festival, due to the customs of eating rice dumpling during this festival is a cultural celebration by Chinese communities around the world of which many would celebrate in many ways. It wasn’t a big thing to me; I just like to eat those dumplings my mum made. And as many already know, this nyonya lady cooks pretty damn well. I would say the best in the entire world. Even a simple peanut butter and jelly sandwich she made me would taste absolutely gorgeous. I celebrated mine in Dragon-i, sometime ago and it was completely a different experience. See blog post here for the review.

 

Apparently I wasn’t the only one agreeing to mummy that she made the best dumpling. Many of my friends and relatives said the same. In fact, the persistence and consistency of perpetual pestering got me surrender to put up this post. So here it is, and I hope everyone like this.

 

Firstly, the prep would take about few hours itself. Those dumplings leafs needs to be soaked overnight so it becomes soft. The meat marinated overnight and mushrooms soaked 2-3 hours.

 

 

Rice must be stirred and we also want some chestnut and dried oyster (soaked for 1 hour) ready in hand.

 

 

For those who like to have their dumplings with salted egg yolk in it, you might also prepare the raw yolk. Not to worry because salted egg yolks are already pretty softly solid.

 

 

Next, we stirred all ingredients except the oysters and yolk to cook and we can then start stuffing the dumplings into pretty cones with the leaves.

 

 

For authentic nyonya dumplings, there is blue rice which is coloured with morning glory instead of just plain white rice. That is done by boiling those flowers with some water and the colour extract from the flower is then used to soak some rice. Before you know it, you’ll get those lovely blue rice. The method is the same except that nyonya dumpling have smaller pieces of meats and mushrooms. No chestnuts, oysters, or salted egg because the nynoya dumplings are supposedly a little sweet in taste instead of salty.

 

 

I prepared a video to sum all these up. Apparently, it really isn’t easy to get the shape right. With pressure cooker, the dumplings would be boiled in water for 1 hour. Without pressure cooker, boiling would take 3 hours.

 

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QNSxBANTSQ?rel=0&w=480&h=360]

 

Ingredients:
Rice 2.4kg
(marinate 3 hrs)
Meat: 1.8kg
5 spice powder: 1 tbs
Light soy sauce: 1 tbs
Minced garlic and onion: 1 tbs
(Stirred Fry)
Salt: 1tbs
5 spice powder: 1tbs
Sugar: 2 tbs
Pepper: 1 tbs
Dark soy sauce: 1tbs
Note: add 1 tbs salt to boiling water when boiling the dumplings.
Enjoy!

 

Love, Sycookies

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