Sunday morning dim sum

This morning I was in the mood for dim sum. 

While a dim sum meal contains various dishes (pot stickers, dumplings, spare ribs, soup, etc.) I wanted one dish in particular, Char Siu Bao (Chinese bbq pork steamed buns).

I quickly realized I didn't have any yeast for the dumpling dough and I also didn't have any pork.

So I found a yeast free dough recipe here and I substituted cooked ground bison for the pork.

The dough it not looking so pretty but it will do.

I put 1 cup of the cooked ground bison in a pan along with:

- chopped garlic
- oyster sauce
- soy sauce
- some sugar
- chopped green onions (don't forget this ingredient like I did)
 - 1/2 tsp. of dissolved corn starch

I let it simmer until the sauce was thick and glossy. I set this aside while I worked on the dough.

A piece of the dough rolled out into a 3 - 4" circle with a heaping teaspoon of the filling.

 I wet the edges of the dough with some water and started the pleating.

When you have pleated all the way around, pinch everything together in the center and then give it a twist.

I steamed two and I cooked the other two in the oven.

This one sat in the steamer for about 10 minutes.

As is my usual pre-caffeine custom, I completely forgot about the buns sitting in the oven so they came out looking like this:

Not horrifically burnt but getting there.

It tasted great!

I ended up liking the ones that cooked in the oven better.

I am sure if I had used a recipe that was intended for dumplings instead of one for pizza dough then the steamed one's would have turned out better.

Now I have a ton of dough leftover. Looks like I will be having pizza for lunch!