FINALLY!!!! The Long Awaited XLB Experiment...

We finally tried our hand at making XLBs (aka soup dumplings). After years of being some of the toughest XLB cirtics around and having eaten our way around XLBs in New York, LA, SF, Taipei, and Shanghai, we put ourselves to the test. Well, as they say... walking the walk is WAY harder than talking the talking.
Wil and I knew the qualities we wanted in soup dumplings... flavourful, full of juice, and thin skin. We started off by using the XLB Tutorial provided by Gary Soup on his website http://eatingchinese.org/xlbtutor/xlbtutor.html. Then we went with a divide and conquer approach. I was to handle the aspic and the filling and Wil was to tackle the dough.
I started the aspic by purchasing a whole pigs feet and had the butcher cut up in 1 inch slices. I boiled some water and threw in the pieces of pigs feet and chicken wings. I drained the water after about 5 minutes to get rid of the blood stink. I then filled the pot back up with water and add 2 tablesppoons of sliced ginger, 1 tablespoon of light soy, 1/2 cup of shaoxing wine, 2 whole star anise, 1 teaspoon of five spice powder, 1 teaspoon of salt, and 1 medium piece of rock sugar. I let this concoction cook on low heat for about 8 hrs. Adding more water whenever the liquid got too low and skimming off the fat every couple of hours or so. When it was done, it was a rather viscous liquid. I strained out the liquid and let it set in the fridge. When the aspic was fully formed, I scrapped off any remaining fat from the top. Right before use, I cubed up the aspic.

A pic of the aspic.
Wil made the dough according to the instructions and I made up the filling also exactly according to recipe. We had a whole bunch of people awaiting for this event so they all helped us with rolling out the dough and folding which was the most challenging part. As you can see, we were able to meet the challenge to varying results. Sometimes, we gave up and made gyoza shapes too.

Each of the batches were steamed for about 10 minutes. They were quite delicious... And could rival some of the places around town for sure. But we need to work on getting the dough thinner. That was the universal comment. Also, people liked the more complex and less porky singe-note of the broth I made. This is only the first step, we will come back for another round. Until then....