So, lo mai gai. Being one of the “simpler” dim sums items, it’s quite straightforward but still relatively labour intensive. In order to make your hard work worth it, here're a few more notes to help make them. 1. Which sticky rice to use. Generally speaking, long grain sticky rice is the go-to rice from central to south China when it comes to sticky rice products. Short grain sticky rice is more common in the north and it’d be stickier. You can use short grain if you can’t find this one, maybe just spray water once when steaming so that it doesn’t get too soft or soggy. 2. Sticky rice needs soaking. Some people online use rice cookers to make sticky rice, which is a fine route to go if you want to be lazy (final texture will be softer and a bit less even). But no matter what, you should soak your sticky rice for it to unleash its “textual potential”, even just two hours before tossing it into a rice cooker. But of course, steaming sticky rice should be the way to go as it yields evenly cooked rice with clear grains and great texture. 3. Seasoning the rice. You do need some lard to enrich the rice so that it has a nice fragrance and keeps moist. If you’re vegetarian, we’d suggest a mix of peanut oil and ghee. Now I’ve seen people online adding some sort of darker color sauce to the rice, which seems to be the Malaysian way of making lo mai gai (the one that’s usually steamed in a bowl). However, the Cantonese one does not have a sauce mixed in with the rice, the color on the rice itself comes from lotus leave. Imagine brewing tea and how tea leaf flavors and colors the water, lotus leaf flavors and colors the rice during the slow steaming. 4. Wrapping. Lotus leaf has two sides, usually a browner side and a greener side. When wrapping, the browner side should be the outside and the rice should be wrapped within the greener side. For one lo mai gai, a quarter from a piece of lotus leaf should be enough. Using too many leaves would make it difficult to shape and the result would look clumsy. Don’t be afraid of breaking or leaking, just be gentle and shape it with your palm and the sticky rice would stick together. 5. Fillings. Besides the sauce with shiitake and dried seafood as the major flavor component, you can be creative with what you put on top of that. Abalone, sea cucumber, roast meat, lap mei cured meat, pork belly, or even some nice melty cheese. Just remember, the final 20 minutes steaming is only “heating stuff up” and not cooking, so do make sure everything you put in your lo mai gai is cooked and seasoned. 6. Storage. As always, put them in airtight bags and freeze. Try to finish them within three months as they don’t have any stabilizers and the rice may end up being too dry. That’s all I can think of right now, may add some more later if we can think of other stuff or see other questions. Meanwhile, enjoy lo mai gai~ -Steph
Because I have used some of those exact brands of sauces I can recognize them from your video even though I can only see part of a label flying by and I can go to a Asian store and buy them. Other people who've never seen them before have no clue what you flashed by. Please hold bottles of sauces or other products on screen showing the full front label for at least 2 seconds so people can pause the video and remember what they look like and recognize them later at the store, it will make it much easier for people to shop for ingredients.
Thank you for the videos, Chris and Steph! If you're interested in a shortcut for the sticky rice or just another upcoming cooking/baking channel, Sheldo's Kitchen is worth checking out. He did a video on mango sticky rice recently and showed a microwave method as a 1-hour alternative. I've made sticky rice 3x now that way, and if I were to make this dim sum I'd probably try adapting that method. Interested to know your thoughts if you try it out. I think it's a good lazy alternative and might give more even results than a rice cooker.
@@adriennefloreen I see what you're saying, but there are many products that we use that are available in China (or Southeast Asia) that may not be available elsewhere. And even if you zeroed in on, say, just the United States... some products that are available in Los Angeles may not be available in Chicago! Ultimately, while Donggu soy sauce may be slightly different from Pearl River Bridge soy sauce which may be slightly different than MasterChef or Kikkoman... it's all soy sauce in the end :)
@@ChineseCookingDemystified You do not understand, I have a photographic memory and there are a bunch of Asian markets in San Francisco that have no English in the entire store, their vegetables and meat are labeled all in Chinese and their products don't have translated labels like ones at every other Asian market or Asian grocery store in California, so seeing the front of the label or the name of a vegetable in Chinese even for a second makes me able to remember it and recognize it later if I see it in one of these markets. If I don't see it clearly in your video and want it I have to Google it and look at a picture of it to see something to recognize, please show the front of the label of canned or jarred or bagged products and show the names of vegetables you use in Chinese characters.
These are perfect for an office lunch! Make a dozen meal-sized ones on the weekend, steam and refrigerate or freeze. You don't even need to put them in a box or bag (carry them by a string on the bus or train, mad flex). And if you microwave them, the office kitchen will smell a little like lotus leaf... way nicer than someone's leftover fish.
Lo Mai Gai was always my favorite yum cha dish growing up! Coming from a mixed background (Chinese & Mexican), I always described it as a Chinese tamale to my family on my Mexican side. lol Thanks for sharing this recipe! One day I'll definitely have to give it a shot!
I describe them as Chinese tamales to my Mexican family as well lol. My grandfather also loves the tripe dishes which he refers to as Menudo Chino. (Not how I would, but he's almost 90 so...)
Guys, I think Chris and Steph are in trouble: they didn't say to longyao before frying the food. It's a call for help, we need to do something!! But really, this looks like a fantastic recipe, and more straightforward than I'd expected it'd be. Do you find there's much lost or changed if the protein content of the filling were adjusted upward from just that single piece of chicken?
My favorite dim sum dish by far. It's way too much work for me, but I appreciate knowing how it's done! I've made the filling (sticky rice with Chinese sausage, mushrooms, and chicken) with a pressure cooker before, back when I was first learning how to use my instant pot, and just eaten that straight without the leaves, but it's so true that the leaves impart a unique and lovely aroma on the whole dish.
I feel like an episode on buying quality Chinese products outside of China would be really interesting. It can be a bit of an art. Nothing is more frustrating than driving out of your way to get authentic ingredients, only to end up with something middle of the road or worse. Frozen dim sum is probably the hardest. I find you have to read ingredients really carefully, especially anything with seafood. (Which is like... half of them.) So many brands stretch more expensive ingredients by adding bream, and you just get absolutely foul smelling dim sum. I've gotten pretty good at figuring out which products are likely better over the last few years, but once in awhile, my husband is still like, "Oh god, what did you do?"
I'm so happy you made this I've wanted to show my partner these since we are vegan for nearly a decade but the last time I tried making them they turned out terrible! Thank you!
Omg omg omg!- THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! Lo mai gai is my favourite yum chat dish, and due to “the virus” I haven’t been able to have Yum Cha for 2 years!!!!…… I NEED this in my life!🥰🥰🥰👍🏻 Edit: the ones I eat don’t have seafood, and have Chinese sausage instead- so I might try making that substitution🤷♀️👍🏻
i’ve been thinking about lo mai gai since 2 days ago edit: a couple of the dim sum places i like in san francisco include pork sausage in their lo mai gai as well, so that’s also something i really like in it
Sticky rice parcels are not hard to find in urban Australia but it’s impossible to tell how good the filling will be because they’re generally not branded and therefor it’s a bit of a mystery until you unwrap it. The main benefit of making my own would be consistency.
oh this is an interesting recipe. i've only eaten dimsum in KL, Malaysia / Singapore but have never actually come across lo mai gai steamed in lotus leaf and without the rice being a darker brown color (cooked with dark soy sauce). The ones served in restaurants here are usually steamed in a ceramic rice bowl or in mini disposable foil pie plates. plus the rice is a dark brown color instead of pale like shown in your video. the meat and mushroom are in larger slices and just mixed throughout the rice instead of being deliberately placed in the center of the rice. There is however, another dim sum dish called Hor Yip Fan (Lotus Leaf Rice) that is basically what you made in your video
Lo Mai Gai in lotus leaf are very rare in Singapore unless you go to dim sum restaurants, in most coffee shops/food courts/hawker centre it uses those commercial ones that are sold at supermarket while that are some that hand made those items themselves The most common are the commercial ones from Kong Guan which uses aluminium foil holders & Lim Kee which uses plastic holder that you can steam it with the plastic holder without putting it on a plate
The Dim Sum joint I go to locally does sticky rice fairly similar to these but with fresh shrimp and small chunks of what I think is lap cheong (or a similar chinese sausage) instead of chicken. Easily one of my favourites.
Thanks for another great video! A quick suggestion-- I know putting up an ingredient list for some of the sauces instead of saying it may save a few seconds, but I actually would really appreciate you reading out the list! Since I often leave the video running while I listen, it would save me from having to run over to my phone, pause the video, and try to read it on my small screen. Reading it out quickly might also be more accessible to other people, like those who have vision impairments for example :)
The strong rains in the background though -- it hits me (again) that you're in Thailand, and also, those are very much the monsoon/typhoon rains we get here in the Philippines. Ah, the commonalities.
DOGGY!!!!!!!!! So glad you two are making videos in your new place. I feel this recipe will help me use up some of the short grained rice I've stored in my cupboard.
To me the toughest thing to swap to make this veg would be the lard in the sticky rice. Perhaps you could swap for peanut oil? I'm a little worried that just using a veg oil'll make it a little greasy... so I'd personally probably just back the oil quantity a bit and/or experiment with cutting the oil with ghee. Everything else would be straightforward - up the shiitake quantity to make up for the shrimp/scallop, and either skip the chicken or swap it to something else :)
@@ChineseCookingDemystified I wonder if using one of the oils that solidifies easily in the cold would work. Avocado comes to mind. I am thinking if you throw some marinated eggplant in there it might soak up a little of the oil to help with the greasy issue. 🤔
A most lovely video. Damn near the most complicated thing I've seen. Joyful. had me giggling. My hamburgers have 38 ingredients. And now must eat some. Dim sum ...Love your vids.
My kids, mostly, do like these and I was thinking of making a batch for their take-to-school lunch before school starts in a month. A recent visit from my in-laws where mom taught me more properly how to make zongzi (or rather the proper wrapping and tying), but they're not crazy about those by comparison.
my fave at dim sum , I'm tempted to make'em now ... a big batch ,maybe a double, and freeze ... that's the part I like I had no idea they could be frozen, thanks !
I really appreciate this video because I am trying to reduce plastics in my household and making a batch of these will do just that. Thank you. I have a request. I see videos of Chinese people making a noodle by making a big log and then peeling it like a veggie right into the pot. Can you show us a recipe for that dough? I would really like to try it. It seems less labor intensive in a way and it looks like the noodles are a great texture. Of course, the toppings are endless and that would be your choice as to what you would share. Thanks either way. I have learned so much from you both already. 😊
Only recently did I learn about this dish. Instantly fell in love while simultaneously burning the entirety of the inside of my mouth. Thanks for sharing as always!
I had the luck to visit a dim sum place with my Macanese friend, and he ordered this saying it was his favorite birthday treat. Since then, I've been obsessed with Lo Mai Gai. I'll spend 15 minutes hunting for it at any Asian market I visit. Geez this recipe looks complicated but premade Lo Mai Gai are EXPENSIVE... and I go through them far too quickly. The lotus leaves might be hard to source in the U.S. but trust me they're worth the flavor. It's sort of like the flavor of brown rice tea.
Our local Chinese supermarket in Dallas, Texas, is 99 Ranch. They sell ready to eat dim sum including Lo Mai Gai, but in the grocery area or frozen area I can't find lotus leaves at all! It's like they hoard all of them just to make their LMG, leaving none for the customers!
I explained these to my friends as Eastern Asian tamales and they all immediately understood. I absolutely adore all the different types of steamed stuffed sticky rice. I like taking short grain sticky rice, a little sugar (very little), and then you wrap it around sliced banana and a little sweetened condensed milk, wrap the whole thing in banana leaves and steam. Once they're steamed, let them cool and then slowly grill it while still wrapped in the banana leaf. Amazing dessert or snack.
I normally keep a can or bottle of some cheap non-descript lager (3.5-5% ABV) at home (we do not drink lager) for the purpose of soaking those dried seafood items. Works better than water for our purposes. We've even tried it for rehydrating mushrooms and in certain cases it also works better than water.
I admit I haven't made any of your dim sum dishes yet (because of the aforementioned difficulty level and well, laziness) but bonus points for using the difficulty screen from Dragon Age Origins!
In Vancouver most restaurants would put in a piece of Chinese sausage. I've never been a huge fan but my boys loved them, so I would always call dibs on the sausage. As they got older I faced increased resistance. lol
Add: 1. Hard boiled salted yoke (1/2), 2. 1 piece braised pork belly or short cut can ones. 3. I like also the 'jung ge' small yellow beans 4. Red Chinese Sausage (3 to 4 Slices)
I love both Lo Mai Gai and Zongzi, and fortunately living in Scarborough Ontario I have many places that sell both. Since my wife and I dont often go out for dim sum any longer we buy the frozen versions. The cost has almost doubled on both over just the past two years so I'm glad to see how to make lo mai gai so I can spend a day making large batches to freeze just like I do with kimchi cabbage rolls. Oh and is Chris from Queens? I asked because to me he sounds very similar to Richard Dreyfuss, which is pretty cool for the narration of youtube vids.
Ngl, having made dim sum before, those frozen brands actually get ridiculously good for being, well, frozen. Couldn't believe it when I first tried it.
0:30 I absolutely love dim sum, but I've always told my friends "You'd have to be a complete masochist to wanna make a full dim sum course at home from scratch." And the reason why dim sum is so hard and so labor intensive at home, yet restaurants are able to get food out so quick is because most of the restaurants that serve traditional dim sum are typically restaurants that also specialize in banquet cooking. They typically have highly trained chefs, typically a lot of them, that get up at the early hours of the morning, and they prep and cook, and that's all they do until 2 p.m. when some restaurants stop serving dim sum. And they cook a lot more and faster as they have to get as many items out as possible as fast as possible on those carts from the moment those doors open up until after lunch.
The lo mai gai in Malaysia here (not all but the most common I see) is in like a metallic "cup" thing also it does have the sticky rice, chicken, and mushroom. I'm now not sure what's mine here called correctly
I find it interesting these are called Chinese tamales where I am from, in no small part because some are basically just tamales but with rice instead of corn. We do get something closer to this in most dim sum restaurants, but bakeries and the sorts do just make a rice tamal. I am guessing the reverse, making a lo mai gai but using corn, should be posible and taste just as good.
Not sure if they do this in HK or china, But in Singapore and Malaysia it's quite common to omit the leaf (though alot of higher end dimsum restaurants will serve it in the leaf). Instead the meat mix is placed in the bottom of a small metal bowl or an aluminum foil bowl. Rice is layered on top and they're steamed. To serve they just tilt the bowl onto a plate and serve. For take away tin foil variety you can do the same or just eat it out of the foil bowl.
@@ChineseCookingDemystified not difficult at all. Dumplings are widely available. I think it's for speed and efficiency at the restaurant. For takeways, I suppose it's kind of hard to eat a LMG out of a leaf.
I grew up in Canada in the 80’s and there is a large Cantonese speaking population. You see them at all the dim sum restaurants and Asian grocery stores. It really gives it an amazing flavour and aroma. I have also had zongzi as my family are both Cantonese and Mandarin speaking.
My grandmom put smoked salted egg into those goodies... man I missed hers so much, she made those everytime I visited her home back then, her recipe died along with her and my mom have zero idea how to make these. And oh, teach us how to make those dim sum chicken feet please? :D Also one of my grandmom's lost recipe, my mom always failed hers by turning those feet into a mush. I have zero idea on how to make it works.
The ingredients are completely different but the process is very similar to what you would do if you were making tamales, even the lard in the rice (masa in tamales) is similar.
Chicago's Chinatown has a store called "Dim Sum House". You can buy all of your dim sum favorites in their raw frozen state. My son and I usually go twice a year and we spend at least $100 each time. My last three pork buns got freezer burnt :( That's my cue to go back!
funfact i think you can make a beef birria or pork birria lo mai gai but make the consome extra thicker with cornstarch or potato starch until it becomes a sauce but less thicker in this video
