Family Favorite Chinese Meal (Pork Fried Rice and Steamed Dumplings)
When my family gets take out, there will always be some fried rice and steamed dumplings. I wasn't sure if the kids would like the Mongolian beef so I made what I know they love. There are lots of ingredients for this so I will post them as I go and describe the different parts.
The pork I used was smoked a couple of days before. A monster loin.
For the fried rice I made a char siu sauce and cooked down the liquid until it was all stuck to the meat.
The char siu sauce is a 1/3 cup Hoisin sauce, 1/4 cup Habanero honey, 1/4 cup soy sauce, 3 tbs dry sherry, and 1 tsp of Chinese 5spice.
For the rice I cooked 2 cups and let it sit and cool off before I use it. I like to make sure it is totally dry and sticky.
I start by pouring about 1/4 cup of soy sauce 2 tbs of fish sauce, 2 tsp of minced ginger, 1 tbs of minced garlic, 3 tbs of stir fry oil, and a few splashes of hot oil in the wok and warming it up to a simmer. Then I toss in one whole diced yellow onion and let that soften. After that I put one carrot sliced into wok. After the carrots soften up a little bit I crack an egg on both sides everything in the middle and wait for them to cook and scramble them up.
Then I dumped about 1/4 cup of frozen peas into the wok and stirred everything up real good and let it cook for about 3 minutes.
Now its time to dump the rice in a little at a time and stir it up. At this point you just need to add soy sauce and fish sauce until you get the desired taste you want. The rice is going to soak everything up pretty quick. I would say I probably added another 1/4 cup of soy sauce and a tbs or 2 of fish sauce. Once you get the rice tasting the way you want dump in the pork and stir it up. You want to add the pork at the end because you want to be able to taste the flavor of the char siu sauce as you get bites of it. If you throw it in too early it will all be wiped off by the rice.
Now its time to serve it up! Don't forget the pepper flakes
Yum
Now the dumplings
1 lb minced smoked pork loin
1 cup of finely chopped cabbage
1/2 cup chopped scallions
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
1.5 tbs of soy sauce
1 tbs minced garlic
1 tbs rice vinegar
1 tbs cornstarch for dusting
2 tsp minced ginger
1.5 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 egg white
Mix all your ingredients together thoroughly and assemble into wrappers. I just put about a tbs or so of the mixture into the wrapper then folded the wrapper and squeezed the edges to the top and pinched them off. It helps to have a little bowl of water next to you to dip your fingers in to help seal the top. Then also have more corn starch on your surface so the wrappers don't stick.
After you have them all assembled its time to steam them up.
Be sure to take some of the extra leaves from the cabbage and lay them down in the steamer to set the dumplings on so they won't stick.
Once they are done I served them with a soy sauce mixture.
1/4 cup soy sauce, 1/4 cup rice vinegar, 1/4 cup chopped scallions, 1 tbs sesame oil, and 1 tsp of minced ginger.
So good with the sauce
The family was thrilled with this meal. The five of us almost ate all of the dumplings. There was a little bit of rice leftover for later. The rice is super easy to make and we actually make it quite often. The dumplings are pretty simple too. Its just a bit tedious to make them all up. But they are definitely worth the effort. There were one of my favorite recipes I've tried so far.