How-To Make Easy Siopao

Finding an easy way to make Siopao was an accidental feat while perusing The Pioneer Woman’s Tasty Kitchen portal a few months ago. I was just surfing around the site really. Until I saw one of the recent headlines which said “Siopao W/ Sassy Sauce” from blogger Skwishface. In the beginning of the recipe there was a note about excessive step-by-step photos so I went to the original post to see the pictures coz I love recipes with a lot of pictures . So from there on I learned how to make siopao so easily that I could make it with my left eye closed. Well maybe not but you’ll see what I mean when you read this whole thing.

I used fresh garlic instead of a paste. And used leftover bbq pork instead of  roast coz that’s what I have. You can pretty much use any kind of leftover meat.

INGREDIENTS

2 tubes of buttermilk biscuits (10 each)
leftover cooked pork, chopped (I used leftover bbq strips)
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp apricot preserves/ornage marmalade
2 drizzles of olive oil
1 tsp or more  hot red chili sauce
2 tsp water + 1 tsp corn starch (mix and set aside)
3 cloves of garlic, chopped finely

1 sm piece fresh ginger, chopped finely
a drizzle of sesame oil

There’s the leftover bbq pork meat.

Chopped in all it’s delicious glory…

Heat up the olive oil and sesame oil. Sauté the garlic and ginger.

Add the meat, stir, and cook for a few minutes.

Add the soy sauce, red chili sauce, apricot preserves/orange marmalade, stir and cook for a bit.

Pour the water and cornstarch mixture. Stir fast. Then turn the heat off.

Transfer the cooked filling into a bowl, then store in the fridge to cool for 5-10 minutes. Do this so you don’t cook the bottom of the biscuit dough. Trust me on this.

There are your biscuits, roll ‘em flat with a rolling pin.

Add a filling in the middle. Fold the left and right sides upwards. Do the same with the top and bottom. Kinda twist on top to seal.

They don’t look that pretty, but they’re delish, I promise .

Place in a steamer. All rice cookers have that steamer rack so just read your manual to find out how to use it. I bought a small bamboo steamer a few months ago so I’m using that. Make sure to place cabbage leaves or lettuce leaves first. This will prevent the dough from sticking. Use  a parchment paper instead if you have it but lettuce leaves will give the siopao or dumpling a little bit more flavoring, or so I’ve read.

Since this is a small steamer, wok is not necessary. I just used my medium-sized non-stick pan. I added water on the bottom of the pan, coz that’s how you steam things . Place the steamer onto the pan. Check to make sure the water is not touching the lattice/woven part inside the bottom of steamer.

Steam the Siopao for about 20 minutes. Let’s make sauce while that’s steaming.

Sassy Sauce
3 tbsp apricot preserves
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp hot red chili sauce

I decided to use my Magic Bullet to blend the sauce so I’m not dipping into chunks of apricot preserves. A blender is good too.

Here are 4 of the cooked Siopao. Look at all that goodness. Since I have a small steamer with only 2 layers, I have to steam in batches.

And there they are. One of the siopao adapted the color of the cabbage but no biggie. .

Dip Away. You actually don’t need the sauce coz the siopao itself is very flavorful but I grew up eating this with sauce so I had to. And the sauce is delish. Use it for other dumplings if you want. It’s tangy, sweet and spicy. My children ate their siopao as is which was fine coz the sauce like I said was a little bit spicy,

Biscuits, who would’ve thunk it huh? Not only can you make donut holes out of biscuits, you can make Siopao as well. You learn new things everyday.