Baozi

Street Food Pork & Scallion Baozi

 Baozi = Steamed Bun = Best food on Earth

The above statement might be a slight exaggeration. However it is my favorite street food by far, and honestly it might be my favorite type of Chinese food. My love affair with Baozi started shortly after I got to China during my first trip to Globe Square. A friend took me there to introduce me to Chinese street food, I've been buying them at least twice a week ever since.

Whenever I travel to a new city I make it a point to try their baozi, here is a list of my favorite all time baozi: 1st Baozi Lady - Globe Square Baoding, 2nd John's grandparents Tongling, 3rd Baozi shop near the Forbidden City Beijing. The thought of moving away from delicious baozi prompted me to take a cooking class so I can introduce baozi to my friends and family back home.

After much research I found a baozi cooking class in Beijing at Black Sesame Kitchen - I highly recommend it if your in Beijing. This was my second cooking class the first I took in Yangshuo during my backpacking trip.

The school (which is really a restaurant) is located in one of Beijing's Hutongs,  it helped make the experience feel so much more authentic.

I love walking through the hutongs.

The school provided me with excellent directions and I found it no problem. I know I should have taken a picture of the place, but I was too excited to remember, sorry.

Instead here is a picture of my station

Everyone is given their very own apron, pen, and spice bag filled with sichuan mouth numbers. The class included a part about common Chinese ingredients and their uses. Despite living in China for for nearly a year, I still found this section particularly enlightening. Finally I started to understand how the unique flavors of Chinese cooking are created.

Baozi is made in two basic steps, the dough and the filling. The dough is similar to Western bread dough but much less dense. It was tricky getting the correct feel, our teachers kept coming around and helping us find the perfect consistency.

Here the chef & teacher is showing us how to roll the dough.

Anything can serve as baozi filling with the most traditional fillings (the type we made in class) being pork & scallion and egg & chive. I have plans to try and make western breakfast baozi with egg & cheese as a filling :-)

Baozi ready to be steamed

The actual process of making baozi sounds really easy; make dough, make filling, fill baozi, steam. Easy right? NOPE!!!!!!! Filling baozi is an art a difficult art at that, finding the perfect way to cup your hand while you rotate and pinch the top. Not easy. However once you power through the difficult prospect of filling all the baozi, cooking them is really easy.

Put them into a steamer and steam for 15ish minutes.

Then take out and let sit for a few minutes.

Don't they look delicious?

As my year in China begins to wind to a close, I'm looking forward to taking another cooking class. I want to be able to cook my favorite foods for all my friends and family back home.