Who wouldn't love steamed buns? They are soft and filled with so much savory flavored filling. Now, that we're all in quarantine, it made me crave for it!
Steamed Bun
Steamed bun also known as Baozi or bao is known as a bread like dumpling. The bread is made to be soft with yeast. The preparation of this bread is similar with the preparation of Chinese Mantou.
Flavors of Bao
The fillings used in the bao are meat or vegetable. Some people enjoy this with meat and egg together inside. While others make bao with steamy saucy meat inside. Lastly, for vegetarian they make vegetable flavor filling for their bao.
Today, I prepared a Chicken Asado flavor of filling. I guess you're asking now why my bun appeared to color brown. Did I use any wheat for the dough? Since we're all quarantined, I was left with no choice but to only use an all purpose flour. Originally, there can be bought a premixed bao flour where the flour is bleached. In case you can't find a bleach flour, you can make use of All Purpose Flour plus Cornstarch (70/30 ratio).
Today I choose to make chicken asado filling, since again the quarantine left me with all these stuffs at home. The market is away from my place, we have a strict schedule of going out, and my brother in law is the one who goes out, which means he's not so familiar with all the condiments, substitutes, recipes, and kitchen products that I use. So instead of taking it as a misfortune, I take it as a challenge to be still healthy amidst the crisis and all the available ingredients I have at home. Let's now start making Chicken Asado Steamed Bun!
Ingredients you'll need:
For the dough:
2 tablespoon yeast
2 tablespoon baking powder
1 tablespoon baking soda
1 Cup Milk (warm)
2 tablespoon sugar
120 grams white sugar
250 grams of all purpose flour
oil to grease the surface.
1/2 cup of water (optional)
For the filling:
1 chicken breast
6 tablespoon of sugar (my family loves sweet taste asado)
2 teaspoon of pepper
1 tablespoon of oyster sauce
1/8 cup of soy sauce
1 cup of water
1 medium sized red onion (diced)
3 cloves of garlic (diced)
1 1/2 cup of water
Materials:
Large and Medium Bowl
Stand Mixer or a flat spatula
Kneading board or cling wrap to cover your space
Steamer
Spoon
pot
stove
How to make your dough?
1. In a medium sized bowl, make your yeast starter. Placed in your warm milk, add 2 tablespoon of yeast and 2 tablespoon of sugar. Give it a good stir and let it rest with a cover for 10 minutes.
2. After 10 minutes, when you open the cover of your starter, it should welcome you with a bubbly liquid of yeast.
3. Now add the 250 grams of all purpose flour, 2 tablespoon baking powder, 1 tablespoon baking soda, and 2 tablespoon of oil.
4. Place the bowl in your stand mixer, if you don't have a mixer, you may make use a flat spatula to mixed altogether the mixture to form the dough.
5. If you have observed that your mixture is too thick you may add water slowly and gradually.
6. If you have observed that the mixture is too loose, you may add more flour gradually.
7. Once the mixture become together, you can stop mixing them. Mostly for me I took 3 to 5 minutes to make the mixture whole.
8. In a clean space, put a plastic wrap around it, or if you have a kneading board a lot better. Flour them a little bit and transfer the mixture. Here below I am using foil, I realized that I ran out of cling wrap and what I only have is a foil.
9. Transfer the dough in the floured surface. Then start to knead it. Kneading it is stretching the middle end folding it going to the direction to you.
10. You have to continuously knead it until it become smooth.
10. Once smooth. Grease a big bowl with oil and let this dough rest for 12 hours. For people using bleached flour or mixture of All Purpose Flour and Cornstarch, it will become whiter the more resting time is done.
11. After resting for 11 hours, your dough will look like this:
How to make your fillings?
Some people use a pressure cooker to make this process faster. If you're going to make use one, this process will only take 15 to 20 minutes. But if you're going to do this is a regular pot, it will take an hour to have a sticky savory fillings.
Below are the steps on doing your filling:
1. In a large pot, place in the whole chicken breast.
2. Add in the 6 tablespoon of sugar, 2 teaspoon of pepper, 1 tablespoon of oyster sauce, 1/8 cup of soy sauce, 1 cup of water, 1 medium sized red onion (diced), 3 cloves of garlic (diced) and 1 1/2 cup of water.
3. Place the pot with cover on the stove with low medium heat. Check and stir it every now and then. In case that the water is running out, gradually add small amount of water and stir it.
Ideally when the filling is almost done, the meat of the chicken starts to peel off from the middle bone. Once it start to peel off, lower down your heat for 5 minutes and continue to use your ladle to peel off the chicken meat. After 5 minutes turn your stove off and make sure that all your meat peeled off from the chicken, if not, continue to use the ladle to peel them. In case you find it hard to do, you may use fork.
You may discard the middle bone (cartilage) but mine became too soft that I smashed them and added it on my filling which can be seen on the cover photo of this article.
Shaping and adding the filling
1. From the rest, have a good punch to your dough to release some air.
2. Transfer your dough in a clean space.
3. Flatten it a little bit.
4. Cut the dough into 8 parts and form them into circle
So mine here is 7 because the small part is still in my hand rounding it.
5. After rounding each dough, massage them to smooth and start to flatten them but not too flat. Make it at least 1/2 inch thick.
6. Use a round cutter to cut small circles that is around 3.5 inches. If you don't have big round cutters, you may use a glass or a mug with wide mouth opening.
7. Once the circles made, you have to hold the flattened dough on your left hand. Scoop a spoonful filling and placed it at the center of the dough.
8. Gently close the top like you're closing a big dumpling. When closing it, hold the first end in your fingers from your right hand. Then slowly get the next fold as you locked it to the first fold. See the image below:
9. Do the same steps like you did earlier until all the dough are filled. Don't worry if your dough isn't perfect, as long as you start practicing and eating healthy it's completely fine.
Mine aren't perfect too. But they all look yummy!
10. Place a parchment paper under each buns so that when they cook it will not be hard for you to take them out of the steamer.
10. Once you have completed all the dough, let them rest for 15 minutes to once more rise.
Preparing the steam and steaming
1. While your buns are resting, start heating your steamer.
2. When it's time, place all your buns inside the steamer.
3. Cover the steamer at medium heat. Make sure that the cover of your steamer is covered with towel or clothe that will absorb its moist.
4. Let the steamer steam for 30 minutes. Take note not to open the steamer in those minutes or else the bun will fall and will not be bouncy.
5. After 30 minutes, do not open your steamer right away. Wait for another 20 minutes before opening it, so at least it has cooled down. Plus the buns already adjusted to the temperature.
After the 20 minutes rest in the steamer, you can now get the buns and serve it to yourself, or to your family or to your friend after this long quarantine season.
I hope that you enjoy this recipe. Please kindly let me know if you made one. You may tag me in my instagram @liveloveandhope_ or tag my page at facebook Live Love and Hope.
Do not be overwhelmed in doing this dish. Once you try doing it, you will look forward to doing it again. By the way, I learn this recipe originally as vegetarian. So it means you can learn this too and play around the flavor.
Here's a sample of the book that has vegetarian flavor, you can avail it from amazon:
Share your comments below!
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