The ones my Poh-Poh made were so big they were a meal! She folded them the long horizontal way. She used everything here, but also added Chinese sausage, soaked American salt pork, shiitake mushroom, boiled peanuts, and salted egg yolk. She’d make all 22 of our extended family wrap them, and she had a couple electric burners and a turkey fryer that she setup on the patio to cook the hundreds we had made. We would freeze them and for about 4-5 months after that I would come home from school, pull one of the freezer, nuke in the microwave, and enjoy 😉.
Wow, I just had a number of flashbacks watching this. My maternal grandmother would make these a couple times a year, the entire kitchen would be setup as she would single handedly assemble at least a hundred of them for friends to try and compare. But with our high utility cost in city, she would setup a makeshift wood BBQ in the backyard using bricks and boil these guys for hours in huge drum pots. After school, I would sometimes hang out with her watching the fire occasionally tossing in more wood and the occasional tuff of grass. My mother-in-law makes them too but far more often because of her living in community housing is able to negate the utility cost. She doesn't add the mung bean though which I absolutely miss. Oh and they would also add some peanuts and red beans, plus they would leave the dried seafood whole for those of us who love the fragrance but not necessarily eating them.
Yeah his death's really gotten to me, I just had to have something. What I wrote over in /r/cooking when I first heard the news:: I don't think I'd be living in China if it wasn't for him. He was, quite simply, the celebrity that most influenced my life - and perhaps the only one. Back in college, me and my friends'd all gather round, get blitzed and binge-watch No Reservations. Probably far from alone on that front lol. You'd watch it for the food (ZPZ's always done an incredible job on the fixer front), but Bourdain's editorial voice was always there, like a drumbeat in the background. He was always incredibly empathetic, open-minded, and down for anything. He'd appreciate the truly amazing food (which there was a lot of), but also be extremely respectful even if he was eating bush meat in a tribe in Africa. It's basically a masterclass in how to act and find joy in a foreign country. If you were to run a pre-departure class for students going abroad and such, you could honestly just choose some episodes of No Reservations and Parts Unknown and let Bourdain be the teacher. When I was straight out of university living in Beijing and Shenzhen, I was a kid that (probably in a cringe-worthy way, looking back) was trying my best to hunt down the best, most legit, local food. Attempting to 'follow in the footsteps', if you will. In that, I found a great deal of joy living in China and traveling around Asia, even when things didn't match up to my expectations career-wise. And his empathy, his really trying to take the negative in stride, undoubtedly left an enormous footprint on me. And I've found that I'm not alone. There's a good chunk of expats that live here in China that're really a huge drag to be around. When I've found someone that I like, someone well-adjusted, someone that I enjoy being around... often I've found that they also had the same experience. An older millennial, someone that also binged Bourdain. He left this huge footprint on a whole generation of people. Look at the food travel folks on RU-vid... Mark Weins, Trevor James... yep, Bourdain devotees. While he might not of been as widely influential as some other celebrities, those that watched him and read him've been deeply changed for the better. The only celebrity I've ever truly cared about. All I gotta say is, fuck, rest in peace. You've made the world a better place.
Hey guys, a few notes: 1. So, I screwed up when filming. There was a shot when we added cool water to all our soaked ingredients that I, uh... forgot to press 'record' on. I tried to make due, but I'm worried that that part was a bit confusing. Basically, we're soaking the rice and the mungbeans for 5-8 hours (MAX eight else it'll get mushy) and the bamboo leaves, mushrooms, and dried seafood for an loose 'overnight'. All of this is cool water. 2. When you're rinsing the rice, do it about three times til the water runs clear... ish. This's still sticky rice, after all. 3. Steph likes soaking the dried mushrooms in with the rice. It's super subtle, but you can do that too. 4. Some people soak dried bamboo leaves in hot, boiled water with a bit of oil mixed in (still overnight) instead of our cool water soak. We don't think it makes too much of a difference either way. 5. Misspoke when talking about the pork marinade, we added in *one* tablespoon of red fermented tofu juice, not two. Decided again editing it in inline in the video as we think it'd be fine with two tablespoons as well. 6. When wrapping the Zongzi, make sure that the shiny/smooth side is facing up at the start. You could get a good visual when we were wrapping it, but it bears emphasizing as the dried ones are a bit less obvious. 7. Huge thank you to 'Walkabout Rojo' for letting us use his Guangzhou Dragon boat festival footage. Full vid's here if you'd like to check it out: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-DMVSQhmUItM.html 8. Just one further point of clarification, when we're talking 'sticky rice', that's glutinous rice :)
Is it possible to say the names of the items in both Cantonese and Mandarin? Many of the Chinese food stores in North America speak primarily Cantonese.
Yeah, I know, but Chris' Cantonese pronunciation sucks. That's why we always put down the Chinese characters in the written recipe though, so that you can just show it to the stores.
My grandmother (Pwa Pwa) on my father's side (Toisan) used to make these. We called them 'joong'. She made them during dragon boat season. There was no 5 spice in hers. Her different variations had: salted egg, Chinese sausage (lap cheng) or pork belly, peanuts or mung beans, salted shrimp. I miss hers so much. I've never found any other as good. Thanks for posting! I always wondered how the heck the folding was done!
No single video series on RU-vid can create such truly punishing hunger as yours. So, congrats! (And sincere thanks for all the time and effort, thank you !)
Thank you for your content - informative, authentic, addictive and quite calming as well. I doubt I'm the only one who binge watches this channel to decompress and tune-out of life's daily stress. Thank you, and never stop!
Hi Steph! My husband absolutely adores your authentic kung bao ji ding recipe, he hasn't been able to taste an authentic version of the recipe for ages :)
Used to be my snack when i was in Singapore. It's known as bak chang, now living in Ireland, I've lost touch with my favourite food of Singapore. I'm going to try making it, following your easy recipe. Thank you so much.
I grew up in Guangxi and I remember my mother making multi colored rice zongzi. I was young but I remember her setting out many bowls of rice, each a different color. I don’t remember there being a specific filling but the flavor of the rices was unforgettable. Could you all perhaps make an episode about the different colored rices that can go into zongzi?
This is a really nice and comprehensible recipe that made it a lot easier to learn making 粽子. Thank you for making these recipes so easy to understand and still really authentic~
First of all, thank you for your video and the inspiration of the traditional method of making sticky rice/glutinous rice dumplings. The rest of the world who traditionally make Joong / sticky rice dumplings the traditional method, though tastes great (excellent video by the way), is so old school. I get that back in the days people didn't have plastic or convenient vessels or containers so bamboo leaves were used to wrap this meal and make it "on the go" aka "take-out friendly". Gotta give it to them, this was 100% recycling at the time. Now a days, about 99% of us all eating sticky rice dumplings is done at the convenience of home. It's 2022! Let's update the tradition, cut out the manual labour, make bamboo tea and then infuse the tea into the glutinous rice mixture and steam the mixed ingredients for 1-2 hours using a vessel to hold the rice, mung beans, Chinese sausages diced, pork belly in pieces, chopped mushrooms, salted duck egg yolks and all the other ingredients and pour in the bamboo tea into the vessel and you still get the infused flavours and textures of Joong but skip out on the production / assembly line. I've made it this long weekend (May 21/22 2022) and my family and my parents were very impressed! The key is the tea from the bamboo leaves! This is innovation!
Thanks Steph and Chris for the reminder of my childhood! Hmmm, my mom is from ToiShan (Cantonese) and she had all the ingredients listed above with Steph's and Chris' version, but she added even more ingredients on top of that: Chestnut, uncooked peanuts, Chinese sausage (lop cheung), Chinese bacon (lop Yook), and salted quarter egg. Just eating two of these is a full meal. My mom's version only added salt, but precooked all her ingredients where necessary and separately in separate bowls right before assembly. She also wrapped it differently than above, her style is similar but holds almost double than Steph's and Chris' demonstration. A lot of work and yes it requires many hands to help. :D
As usual~you make it look easy! My abilities in wrapped food ends with cabbage rolls, lol. These look delicious. It would be so much fun to experiment with flavours. Another good one! Jenn 💖 in Canada 🍁
Anthony Bourdain enlightened me to the true nature of Chinese cooking and if a man of his experience can feel like a student again from a cultures cooking,
@@typhooonn lol i know this comment is old but im pretty sure op is referring how similar zongzi is to tamales; particularly the ones wrapped with banana leaves and some parts of latin america use rice instead of corn.
thank you thank you thank you thank you THANK YOU for showing how to wrap them in detail, I could never do it right looking at RU-vid videos, they all had nowhere near enough detail. Side note: almost all the zongzi I've had had salted duck yolk, any reason why your version doesn't?
Salty egg yolk is not a traditional ingredient in Cantonese savory zongzi, more of a recent year addition. So we stick with pork belly (which is fatty enough) and a bit dry sea food for umami. I'm glad you like the video, I was worry that the instruction is not clear enough.
Dude I'm from Northern China so our staple is sweet Zong Zi but I love salty/meaty ones! I'm moving to California soon, can't wait to have some of these after I get there :D
I love this type of dumpling and your recipe for the stuffing. I am reluctant to to try to make them because the wrapping looks tricky.( Steph makes it look easy ). Could I make this like a casserole in the oven just layering the ingredients and wrapping it Really good or what about steaming it on the stove?
Hmm... I thought about this for quite a bit and I just... couldn't think of anything :/ The best that I could say is just to give wrapping them a try, and then steaming them in the Northern style over boiling in the Southern style? That way if there's any that break apart it's not the end of the world or anything. I was brainstorming ways that maybe you could wrap them like Polish cabbage rolls... add some liquid and do in a casserole dish... but I just can't figure out how exactly that'd work out and whether it'd actually be easier than wrapping em up haha For another dish that's a similar-ish flavor profile that also uses sticky rice, there's always the stir-fried sticky rice dish: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-M4ve-tqU0i8.html ^ that one's a little tricky because a lot of it's feel, but if you have some risotto making experience it's not too bad :)
I will never again complain about how *tedious* filling and wrapping 100’s of tamales is…these have like 4 extra steps for each little food package! But I bet they’re just as delicious and worth the effort! 😋
Most places say it originated with one of Peru's indigenous groups and they're probably right but if Chinese-Peruvians could influence Peruvian cuisine everywhere else, why would juane somehow be untouched?
When filming folding, it is much simpler if you show it without cuts in the video, or at least without a change in perspective. People watching will have a mental orientation of the - in this case - leaves. I can recommend watching a few origami tutorials, as they have perfected this style of video.
Okay, I must be honest here. When I first saw the thumbnail for this dish, my first thought (especially since I had never heard of this before) was, "That's strange. I'm fairly certain that China doesn't do Onigiri". Well, I was right, and these sound delicious, but-- well, they looked at first like onigiri, the Japanese rice "ball" that is a staple of lunches and snacks over there. It's the somewhat triangular, somewhat flattened shape these dumplings take, you see. But appearances can be deceiving, and these are-- other than shape and looks-- nothing of the sort. Well, except they are both made of rice. I will admit to being more familiar with Japanese cuisine than real Chinese (which is part of why I subbed to this channel, to learn that stuff!) and it's often amazing to me how two cultural cuisines with the same staple base-- Rice-- can veer in such different directions! Perhaps I'll find zongzi and try them someday-- I honestly don't think I'll ever find the ingredients to try them for myself (that, and I live alone and cook for one, and this is pretty much a recipe that says "Don't try this unless you want to be eating pork, beans and rice for a week!" which is a concern. Heh...). Still amazed how similar they appear, at least at first glance. Might be fun to switch them in peoples lunchboxes... and see the reactions.
They're pretty tasty, give em a go if you get the chance :) There's actually a Chinese dish that's even *more* similar to Onigiri called 'Cifantuan' ... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cifantuan Zero clue if there's actually any connection between the two, prolly just convergent evolution!
you should check out Arancini en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arancini which is pretty much deep fried Italian rice ball, which takes an even more unique approach to rice ball.
Looks like you doesn't know anything about Japan cuisine. During the tang dynasty. A lot of Japan,Korean scholars went to China and because the tang emperor was a friendly emperor,he allowed many foreigners to stay and study in China and know every Chinese cuisine. Tang emperor open China to some Asian countries that is why Chinese cuisine spread to other part of Asia. Zongzi was already prepared by Chinese people for a long period of time and it was only prepared during dragon boat festival. Every festive events in China,they prepared different cuisines and foods.
Crossing my fingers as I make these using the salt you've specified... It is more salty on the rice and mung beans than I have seen in any other recipe...
So a lot of the salt comes out in the cooking. But the rice was well salted and not overly salted and you can eat it just as is after opening the zonzi. I personally would cut back a little because I tend to like to use a bit of dark soy sauce on my zongzi and some scallion oil.
Use salty egg yolk for fat maybe, or something else that's fatty. Don't think lamb or beef brisket would work, but maybe give a try? I'm worry that they may be too tough to cook through. I think chicken may actually be a better sub (remember to include some fat bits in). You want the fat to melt into the mungbeans and creating a almost creamy texture.
Oh, another thing, if you're using chicken, remember to give it a fry with the mushrooms, so that the chicken skin will be a bit more soft. And roast duck will definitely work too.
My mom did a couple of times a year. It's one of my favorite foods. She would stir fry the filling and put it on top of the rice after most of the water cooked out on the rice cooker.
IIRC up north they'll steam em... but so long as you did your job wrapping the zongzi well (no holes or such), the bamboo leaf'll protect it and it won't get mushy.
Is it glutinous rice or calrose rice? It looks and tastes like glutinous rice to me, which isn't often used in Japanese and Korean cooking. People might be more familiar with it from the Thai mango and sticky rice desert.
Yep, exactly. Short grained sticky rice (aka glutinous rice, I pretty the name 'sticky rice' because there's not actually any gluten in rice haha). Note that there's two sort of sticky rice: long grain (i.e. the stuff that's steamed as a plain rice in Thailand/SE Asia) and short grain (i.e. the stuff that's used used in desserts throughout Asia). The short grain has a more Amylopectin and what you'd want for this particular dish :)
Chinese Cooking Demystified "sticky rice" can create confusion too as a lot of Americans refer to Japanese rice as "sticky rice" because it's stickier than what they're used to. But it's not what you need for this recipe
In American cuisine, rice is almost always medium or long grain, and people expect a very fluffy final product. Directions often say to fluff with a fork once done, like couscous or quinoa. So, when comparing to something like Japanese sushi rice, a lot of people find it stickier, and don't make the distinction between "sticky"/"glutinous" rice.
Jeremy Gabbard: the Chinese short grain rice is 'sticky rice'. It's more sticky than the Japanese sushi rice. I found that out when I made Chinese sticky rice with sushi rice :)
So we actually wanted to talk about this in the reddit post. A note on leaves, if ya don't mind me copy/pasting: "So I know that ‘bamboo leaves’ are one of those potentially annoying things to source. Note that you could unequivocally *not* sub in lotus, which are far too delicate. The thing is that while bamboo’s dominant, there are other places that use different, more locally available leaves. For example, there are some places up north in China that use a certain variety of reed, and in Vietnam they’ll use the leaf of a plant called *dongye* (‘phrynium’, also used to make certain types of zongzi in Guangdong). We thought bananas leaf might be an interesting possibility that may be more available globally… so we gave it a try. While I’m sure that someone smarter than us might be able to crack that nut, the fibres in the banana leaf broke far too easily to wrap in the method we listed above. So no go re banana, unfortunately :/" You should be able to find the dried ones online or in Asian supermarkets though... especially this time of year!
Ah this Cantonese sort's my personal favorite, but maybe next year :) When it comes to other festival food though, my absolute favorite mooncake's the flaky sort from Chaoshan (朥饼)... it's a big limiting factor in any potential mooncake vid, because my heart's set on it but I can't find many decent resources lol
I like the Cantonese zongzi too except the mungbeans. I just find it to be really weird to include them as an ingredient and they sometimes taste bitter, which is a big no to me for a savoury food like zongzi.
I'm guessing the bitterness may come from undersalting the mungbean. In my first test batch, the mungbean is undersalted and it has that very slight aftertaste. But once it's properly seasoned, I really love that smooth and almost creamy texture when it's mixing with the pork fat.
Haha yeah we wanted a bit of music for the outro... but unfortunately decent free music's hard to come by! I watch Babish quite a bit, and after he had to cut out Ratatat I found he was using music from 'Broke for Free', which is completely loyalty free and pretty decent. Chose a song Babish hadn't used in his videos, but recently he's used Add And for a couple lol
Haha this recipe makes 35 zongzi, so between the mungbeans and the rice that's like... about a third of a teaspoon of salt per zongzi? Of course, everyone has their own taste! Feel free to cut back on the salt if ya prefer.
They're different. Fresh shiitake has certain flavor components(e.g. octanol) that break down when dried, however, the drying process also breaks down the mushroom which results in more GMP which is a source of umami which amplifies the taste of MSG. It's like the difference between grape juice and wine, they're each good in their own way.
If you watched the video carefully, those Zongzi were boiled, so a huge part of salt eventually went to the soap as well. Yeah, we don't drink the soap.
We boil the zongzi here in Guangdong, only one very specific type is steamed. I think many other regions also boil the zongzi. It's just regional difference.
I'm from Taiwan, and for its small size we also have a distinct difference in the preparation of the dish. Northern Taiwan steams the rice first and then stir fries the ingredients, then wraps and steams again. Southern Taiwan packs the rice raw and the meat cooked, then boils the zongzi. I prefer the Southern Taiwanese zongzi.
+ adrianlindsaylohan I think the Teochew style zongzi and those from Hokkien area also share the same difference. Some are precooked then steam and some are cooked with raw rice. Had different zongzi from that region, but dunno which is which, lol. Both technique seem cool though. There's one kind of zongzi where they pack both sweet and savory stuffings inside, so you got one sweet side and one savory side. Is there anything like this in Taiwan?
