Children will like this quick and simple skillet supper. For a complete dinner, serve along with a green salad.
| Prep Time: | 50 mins |
| Cook Time: | 1 hr |
| Additional Time: | 6 hrs 30 mins |
| Total Time: | 8 hrs 20 mins |
| Servings: | 24 |
| Yield: | 24 steamed buns |
Ingredients
- ½ pound boneless pork loin roast
- ½ cup barbecue sauce
- ⅓ cup chicken broth
- 3 tablespoons shallots, chopped
- 1 tablespoon dark soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
- 1 tablespoon white sugar
- 1 recipe Chinese Steamed Buns
Instructions
- Mix pork, barbecue sauce, broth, shallots, soy sauce, oil, and sugar together in a glass or ceramic bowl. Cover and marinate in the refrigerator for at least 6 hours.
- About three hours before the meat has finished marinating, follow Steps 1 through 4 in the
- recipe to make dough. (This should take about 4 hours, so the dough will be ready when the pork has been cooked and shredded.)
- When pork has finished marinating, preheat an outdoor grill for medium heat and lightly oil the grate. Cut 24 small squares of waxed paper.
- Remove pork from marinade and shake off excess. Discard remaining marinade.
- Cook pork on the preheated grill until an instant-read meat thermometer reaches 145 degrees F (63 degrees C), 10 to 15 minutes. Allow to cool, then shred or finely chop meat.
- Shape dough into 24 balls. Roll each ball into a circle and place 1 tablespoon pork in the center. Wrap dough up and over filling, then pinch to seal the edges. Place each bun, seam-side down, onto a waxed paper square; let stand until doubled in volume, about 30 minutes.
- Bring water to a boil in a wok over high heat. Reduce the heat to medium and maintain a boil. Insert a steamer basket or place a steamer plate onto a small wire rack in the middle of the wok. Working in batches and leaving the outer 2 inches of the steam basket uncovered, place buns (on waxed paper) into the steamer basket, spacing them 1 to 2 inches apart. Cover the wok and steam for 15 to 20 minutes.
- Remove the lid, then turn off the heat. (If you remove the lid after turning off the heat, condensation from the lid will drip onto the surface of the buns, causing yellowish blisters.) Remove buns from the wok.
- Repeat Steps 6 and 7 to steam remaining buns, adding more water to the wok as needed.
- Nutrition data for this recipe includes the full amount of marinade ingredients. The actual amount consumed will vary. The nutrition data for the dough is not included.
Reviews
i suggest you empathize that its a filling and its not complete otherwise its good and was easy to make feed six teens
No changes made. Great!!
Hi Carol,thank you so much for the Chinese bun dought. It has been a challenge for me !( I’ve tried many before yours and I’m not satisfied ( always dry,and tough!) So I tried your dought instruction and it’s result :! It’s soft and flaky! Voila !( enthought the dought was wet and needed more flour when kneading! ) I think next time my Chinese pork bun will be perfect (first time today).Thank you and I feel lucky to have found you.Lulu.
The taste is exactly what I wanted! I ate them when I was young, in Hawaii, where they are called Mana Pua. The dough is STICKY. I had to really flour my hands and the prep surface to minimize the tackiness. I thought the meat to dough ratio was just right. It was easier to pull apart – rather than cut – the portioned dough into 12 pieces. The dough was so sticky that my prep method evolved into flattening the dough pieces, putting the meat on top, then lifting the edges to pinch the top closed, then twisted it a couple of times (idea from another website during my research). I am very happy! Store-bought can be so expensive plus sometimes you get only a tiny bit of meat in a mountain of bread. 🙂
My first ever attempt at making them, would make them thicker, to retain the shape better, I also did a vegetarian version, still super tasty, would make again, but give myself more time to make them, maybe dough in the morning, filling after lunch, prep, then cook for tea
This was great! I used it for Chinese Steamed buns from this site.
Make sure you dice the pork loin to make wrapping easier. My only complain is that the marinade turned out very watery and made it really difficult to scoop into the steam buns dough without marinade dripping all over. Could just be my poor bun wrapping skills, but I noticed flour in Direction #1, but didn’t see any in the ingredient list. Could be why my marinade was so watery… Also, I don’t have wax paper and used foil instead and the bun didn’t stick to the foil at all, even though I didn’t oil the foil. Will attempt this again for sure!
Loved these buns! My husband and I both spent time in Taiwan and agreed that they tasted very much like those in Taiwan. I had leftover pulled bbq pork that I used as the filling. I only gave 4 stars because they were a little doughy where you overlap the dough, but that could just be a matter of wrapping technique. Will be keeping this recipe handy as I can see making these buns many times!
These were so easy to make. I did not use the filling recipe however. I purchased ready made shredded pork from the grocery store in the prepared meats section and added it to the sauce in this recipe. My 13 year old son took one bite and said “this is the best thing I have ever tasted in my whole life!”
These didn’t turn out so well. I followed the recipe to the letter, and they turned out vinegary and the dough was chewy. Overall, I really didn’t like the outcome.
Very authentic! Based on a few of the reviews, I made 12 larger buns instead of 24 and steamed them for the full 20 minutes. I only had about 1.5 hours to let the dough rise, but they still turned out great. Instead of wax paper, I used parchment paper and had no trouble getting them off.
Thank you for this recipe! Also thank you ENDLESSSKY for the vegetarian suggestion as I am also a vegetarian. I added some fresh shitake mushrooms and some raw shredded potato marinated with the seitan and then stir-fried them before I chopped them up as the filling, which made it more moist and less dense on the inside. :p
These were time-consuming and didn’t taste half as good as the ones from the local market. In fact the sauce was way off. They weren’t horrible, and I’m sure it was something I did to make them taste and look weird. Oh well, I’ll just keep going to the market!!
Loved it…Thank you
I made this for the first time today. It was soooo gooood. I did not make it with the BBQ pork because I was a little short on time instead I used some BBQ ribs meat that I got at the store. I removed the meat from the ribs and used that instead. Oh and I added more filling to the dough so it would be fuller. I also did not get all 24 instead I got only 12.
I followed the recipe exactly for the bun part, but like other reviewers have mentioned, I had to use more flour when kneading…it was way too sticky. I placed the seam side down onto the wax paper and at first they didn’t look too great but by the time it came to steam them they were all smoothed out. Came out fluffy, moist and delicious. A bit time consuming but worth it. I made a bit of a bigger bun and it made 12. I didn’t use the bbq pork recipe and instead picked up 1/2 lb of char siu and I asked for extra sauce. Just chopped it up and mixed with the sauce and stuffed the buns with it. The only bummer is they aren’t so good when reheated in the microwave a day later and I even did the damp paper towel trick.
Yummy steamed buns! They were a hit! Next time I’ll try other fillings!
Good buns, but I would suggest making more dough than listed. They come out beautiful at first but as the dough runs out they get smaller and the thin skin bursts when closing up the bun. But other than that good job! PS: Or, instead of making more dough, cut the meat smaller. I cut them about half the size of my pinky finger.
Made plenty for four or five eaters, about 17 medium buns. Do not use bread flour; even with the AP suggested it was more glutinous/chewy than I’d like, though that might be because I only had bread machine (fast rise) yeast! I skipped the first dough step, as per the yeast directions, and just mixed everything all the ingredients from step 1 AND step 2 together at once before leaving it for 3 hours in microwave. This worked fine. Left filling mixed overnight in the fridge. I subbed ordinary onions for shallots which wasn’t good – the almost-raw onions caused indigestion. Could use green onions. Cooked with a saucepan and steamer set, doesn’t have to be a wok. Do 15 minutes at most or they get chewy. Very good flavour, dough texture was a tad off, but it’ll be our recipe…for when we have lots of time, haha. Oh, the filling is very sweet, which is how I like it, but if you want more savoury, just be sure to use a sweetish BBQ sauce and then leave out the white sugar entirely.
MMMMMMM Yummy!!! I was craving for “dim sum” from my home country and was really happy when I found this recipe. Tried it today and wow!!!!! it was really good…..just like the steamed buns from back home. My husband thought they were delicious too. I made the dough by hand and had to add about 1 more cup of flour like one reviewer did. Thanks so much for the recipe, Carol. Now, I don’t feel so homesick. 🙂
I loved these! My husband lived in Taiwan for a couple of years and he thought they were close to how he use to eat them. I’m so glad I tried this recipe. I am going to make these often.