VEGAN DIM SUM MASTERCLASS

1. Vegan Dim Sum: Introduction: So when I became vegan a few years ago, one of the first questions that people would ask me was, well, how do we have our dim sum? And I was like, yeah, I don't think you can. I think dim sum has such a big meaning of being social to it because when people asked you up for them some, it's really, let's go out, let's hang out with family and friends. And so when, if you're vegan or vegetarian and you can't have it. A lot of the times it feels like you're shunned away from society. It makes sense that some of the first recipes that I was asked to develop in a vegan version was Dim Sum Dems symptoms, some Dimson, everybody missed it, everybody wanted it Back in their lives. And so that is why I wrote vegan them some in the first place. Dim sum actually covers such a wide topic. And so I thought really the best way to explain dim sum to you all would be to cover each section of the book so that you learn bits and pieces of everything. And in addition, I will be including five extra recipes attached to this course so that you can be enjoying more SOPs and then to further dive into the world of vegan dim sum. In the first section, we're gonna be covering a classic sauce, moistened sauce, which everybody uses at home, but it's also a big condiment when it comes to dim sum. Section two, we're going into steamed dim sum and one of the most popular ones is going to be your radish cakes. Now, it is true that this cake is finished off, pan fried, but actually the mechanism to make the cake is that it is steamed. In section three, we're moving into be fried category and I'm going to show you how to make fried dough sticks. It is used in Kanji for morning breakfast and then also used as ingredients within dim sum. But there are some tips and tricks on how to master this seemingly basic but can be quite complicated. Recipe. Section four, we are talking about stove top recipes and these Hong Kong crispy noodles. One of my favorites to order when things on the cart might seem a little bit too small and you want something bigger to really fill you up. In section five, I think this is going to be everybody's favorite and that is the dumpling category. Of course, on Skillshare. I have a course on how to build a dumpling from start to finish. But this one, I'm going to show you the classic shoe, my dumpling, which is typically made with fresh pork and fresh shrimp. But I'm going to show you how to do that all entirely from scratch, vegan style. In Section six, I knew we couldn't leave them some without showing you a desert. So I'm going to make the classic EKG heart, but done in a very easy style so that you all can follow along. My name is Christina and I will be your vegan than some instructor. 2. Vegan Dim Sum: Hoisin Sauce: Welcome to Lesson one, everyone. And we're going to be making hoist and sauce together, which I think is a sauce that everybody has at home. And usually there's like a ton of different ingredients in there. You don't know what it is. And it is just so, so easy to make it at home and it tastes ten times as good. I know everybody says that like, oh, homemade is better and that is not always true, but it is true for this sauce. And we will be pairing it with recipe from our next section and using it as a condiment. But in a lot of Asian recipes, you'll also see hoist and sauce used as an ingredient itself. So it's nice to have this recipe at home in case if you don't have it available at your store. And it also keeps really well into the refrigerator. And if you wanted to extend that shelf-life some more, I would just stick it into the freezer like little ice cube trays. And that way you can have a little bit and just melt a little bit as you go along. Interestingly, when you translate this sauce into Chinese, it makes reference to this. See, I think a lot of people think, oh, there must be seafood and moisten sauce. And usually actually there, there, there isn't. I mean, some people can choose to maybe mixing some Oyster Sauce or whatnot, but usually it is not. So that is a good thing to keep in mind if you happen to be vegan or vegetarian. So in general, you just mix all of the ingredients together. But we're going to start off with the Tahiti and the water first because we want to thin that out. So one-and-a-half tablespoons of Tahiti with right around two tablespoons of water. And then I'm adding one tablespoon of some Chinese fermented black beans that I've mashed up. So these are the same black beans as in the black bean garlic sauce. Only you can find them separately at the grocery store. And I just put in about a tablespoon of boiling water to help it soften up. And then you can match them up all nicely into a paste. Now, if you guys can't find it, I think you could substitute for miso or maybe a Korean soybean paste. It has a similar flavor, but the black beans obviously provide that nice hoisting, dark color and the flavor is just a little bit different. I have some brown sugar, some five spice powder, as well as a little bit of chili powder. I'm going to mix that all in. And then the last two are going to be one-and-a-half teaspoons of rice, wine vinegar as well as one tablespoon of soy sauce. And just mix all of that together. You can keep this amazingly delicious sauce in the refrigerator for a couple of weeks. And if you do want it thicker, because I usually use it as an ingredient in other recipes or as dipping sauces. So this consistency is good with me, but you could always cook this in a pot with a little slurry and then that will help thicken up the sauce as normal hoisting might look. But for me, this is good and I don't have to cook it or add any extraneous ingredients. 3. Vegan Dim Sum: Turnip Cakes: Welcome to lesson to everyone. And in this lesson, I'm going to show you how to make steamed turnip cakes or steamed radish cakes. And I think it is literally a favorite because that is the first recipe that everybody asks about. And usually it is steamed first, so it's actually considered a steamed k, but then it's finished off on a flat top to get the outside nice and crispy, which I think it makes it really fragrant and why everybody likes it. And even better is that it is usually paired with the condiment that we made in less than one, that homemade hoist and sauce. This is going to be a unique recipe because typically with radish cakes or turn of cakes, you add in different pieces of kind of like a minced pork or minced small pieces of shrimp. And I replace those with just really like minced vegetables. You can get a lot of texture and flavor just from pan fried vegetables, pan frying mushrooms, which are really the king of flavor in vegan world. And we're just going to mix all of that in. Um, I'm gonna show you some techniques on how to create texture in turn of cakes, which is actually the most prized. You don't want your turn at cakes to be overly soft. You actually want them to be a little bit soft, have some texture as well. And a note of caution for anybody who has worked with turnips radishes before. You know that the smell is quite pungent at the beginning. And so the whole house is kind of perfumed with this. It may not be the best smell at the beginning, but as it seems, as it cooks, radishes just turn sweet and mellow and it comes really the best flavors. So, yep, I hope you all enjoyed this one. So the recipe is actually pretty easy. You just have to do a lot of prep work by chopping up some DICOM radish, some mushrooms, some carrots, some shallots, just into really fine pieces. Now in the book, I put in some vegan lap Chong sausage as well. You can do that if you want. You can substitute another sausage if you have that. But what you see here are the daikon radishes in big chunks and in shreds. And that is the secret tip also in the book, uh, to creating really fluffy, really soft daikon radish cakes is to have chunks and also the strips. So what I'm doing here is putting the mushrooms, shallots and carrots in first and just frying them for about two to 3 min until they get a little bit more crispy and all of the flavors come out. And then I'm going to put in the daikon radish and cook them over about medium heat for two to 3 min. And the reason is because dicot radish has a ton of water in it and you just want to let some of that evaporate out so that it takes on whatever flavor we're going to be adding in afterwards. So I'm just gonna be adding in the flavoring ingredients for your daikon radish, and that's just some garlic powder, some sugar. I have a vegan Boolean cube and then some water as well. And what you want to do with the spoon is to just scrape off but little bits of flavor on the bottom. And we're going to bring this guy up to a boil and then cook it for right around eight to 10 min until the mixture has reduced by about a third. Now, we're gonna do a starch batter that essentially solidifies the turn of cake. So that's some rice flour, some cornstarch, and then I'm going to mix in some water until the batter is completely smooth. And then afterwards, after the turnip mixture cooks down a bit, I will pour that into this. Now I've liberally greased to seven inch cake pans, and this is going to work a lot better if you have a square pans just because of the shape, but I actually did not have that. So divide the batter between two of them. And what you wanna do is have a pot of water steaming already, right? Because the starch is going to settle to the bottom if you guys just let this rest. Now, one thing that I forgot was to tell you guys to put a sheet of aluminum foil over each of the pants because the condensation from all of the steaming will seep in and make the cake soft. So make sure to cover that before we steam this on medium high heat for right around an hour. So to serve, I've actually left this cake cool overnight in the fridge. That's how it will firm up. Because if you don't, it is very, very soft. And we're just going to take it out. I'm going to cut it up into little pieces. It can be square, it can be whatever shape that you want. And I'm just going to pan fry it with a little bit of oil. And that way it'll have a nice, crispy exterior. And the inside is just nice and soft and fluffy. Oh gosh, those turnip cakes look awesome. So what I do is I will garnish it with a little bit of scallions and also some toasted sesame seeds. And obviously turn of cakes work best when you serve it with some hoist thin sauce because that's sweet. The turn of cakes are a bit savory and they are just the perfect pairing. 4. Vegan Dim Sum: Fried Dough Sticks: Welcome to lesson three, everyone. And today I'm going to show you really a staple in Chinese breakfast. You will see fried dough sticks eaten throughout China, throughout Asia and it is put into them some items such as your fried dough, noodles sticks, which was one of my favorites when I was a kid. This is a seemingly basic recipe and it is not too hard to make, but it requires tips and techniques. It is very easy to just take a piece of dough, fry it, and you might get something that is overly crunchy, oh, really tough. So the technique to making fried dough sticks that are essentially soft pillows on the inside, but just lightly crispy on the outside. That takes technique. And here goes this recipe. The recipe for this is all going to be down below. I have some flour, some baking powder, baking soda, salt, water, oil. Very, very basic recipe, but remember that it needs to be on the wetter side. And when it comes to meeting it, I mean, it's so wet that you're not you can't really form a ball of dough, so just need it for three to 4 min up until it kinda comes together. Then you want to wrap it up, stick it in the fridge, 24 h. So you can see that the dough came straight out of the bowl. I'm not going to need it. I'm not going to add anything too much to make the dough rougher. I'm just going to kind of generally nudge it, roll it out into a rectangle. And then this recipe makes about eight Yo tell sticks. But each of the sticks is formed by stacking two layers on top of one another. So you're really looking to cut about 16 strips from this. But be careful because you're not looking for the sticks to be too long. Because remember you have to stretch it before it goes into the fryer. So keep these sticks Kind of a couple of inches, maybe 3 " or so. Not too long, make it manageable for yourself. So as these guys are waiting for the oil to heat up, you do want to leave them for about 15 min just as a final rest so that they can relax. Then once the heat comes up to about 390, you just kinda take it over carefully and stretch it out just a little bit and then drop it into the oil. Some people recommend using tongs and flipping them around. I find that it was actually okay by itself, but feel free to do that method. And then once it turns nice and golden brown, These guys are ready. And before you put it in the next batch, just makes sure that the oil is hot enough because if it's not hot, it is not going to puff up. 5. Vegan Dim Sum: Hong Kong Crispy Noodles: Welcome to lesson for everyone. And today we're going behind the scenes into the kitchen away from the Dimson carts. Because maybe not everybody knows this, but when you go and eat them some, a lot of Chinese families, what they want is something a little bit more satiating, right? Because dim sum is usually small pieces, small morsels. But sometimes you want bigger dishes with rice, with noodle. And this one is one of my favorites. It is a Hong Kong crispy style noodle dish itself is nice and crunchy, but with a very savory meaty sauce put on top. And that sauce eventually kind of goes into the noodles. And so you'll have some noodles that are softer, some noodles that are really crunchy. And in addition, I have made this recipe a bit healthier. We're using either a ton or mushrooms. Actually, if you want for the meat sauce up on top, but also instead of frying it in a big vat of oil, I'm actually going to be baking the noodles. So you're going to get the same crispy feel and the same crispy texture, but with a whole lot less oil. So let's head on over to the recipe. So I'm going to start off by taking out two portions of these yellow thin wheat noodles. And typically Hong Kong crispy noodles are done with an egg Noodle of the same, basically of the same texture, shape, and color. And nowadays in Asian grocery stores, you can get the same version but without the egg. So I'm going to cook it maybe a little bit shorter than according to package instructions because we're going to be begging it as well, so keeping it nice and all dente. And afterwards I'm going to give it a sprinkling of salt as well as one-and-a-half tablespoons of vegetable oil. So I'm pretty much mimicking a little plate nest out of this. And this goes into the oven 375 degrees Fahrenheit for 15 to 20 min until the edges get nice and golden brown and you know that it is crunchy. So the second part of this recipe is to prepare the vegetables and you need about a half a cup of bees, Chinese chives. Usually you use the light yellow ones, but I could not find any light green it is. And I'm using some scallions just to substitute for that color and you only need a half a cup, so I'm way more than necessary. Yes. Yes. I did not soak my mushrooms long enough. So typically you do it for a couple of hours. And I had three Chautauqua mushrooms in one and a quarter cups of water. And sometimes you just want to cut off that stump in the middle because that's the hard bit and then cut it into strips like so. So I've used these dehydrated soya chunks before. They are super convenient and I'll try to put a link down below for you guys. But all you do is you boil it or you rehydrate it in some light vegetables stock, and then they become media pieces like this. So again, you want to cut it into strips because that typically is how the pork, which we are mimicking is cut. So step three, time for the sauce. I have some of that reserved mushroom liquid. And then to that I'm going to add some sugar, some soy sauce. You're going to see vegan Oyster Sauce, white pepper, sesame oil, etc cetera. Recipe is going to be down below, and it's just a basic stir-fry sauce. So just whisk all of that together. And then afterwards, I am going to be making a slurry to thicken up that sauce. I do this quite often. I like to check the focus on the camera. So I'm going to be putting in the Soyuz strips as well as the mushrooms and over medium-high heat, I'm just going to pan fry it for write about a minute. And that just drives things out just a little bit so that they are better able to absorb all of that sauce. So I simmered the soy strips and the mushrooms for three to 4 min just so that it can absorb all of that flavor. And then I'm putting in my slurry and then cooking it right until it starts to thicken. I put the chives in in the last minute or so because I don't really want them to cooked, but just slightly wilted. So afterwards, make sure you try it out for flavor. Doesn't eat more salt, doesn't need more pepper. Do you want to water it down a little bit? All of that goes into that and then you can turn this guy off. So I have a lovely vintage style plate here. Pay no attention to the robot in the middle and the noodles. Wow, they came out so crispy, they came out so well like, I don t think you should ever fry this dish, which by the way, it typically is done like that. And then it gets her house all nice and oily, which is wonderful. But anyways, this a sauce. It's just so midi and savory. And then you get the choosiness from the chives as well. And then that just serves to soften the middle of that nest so that the outside is crunchy, but the inside is just nice and comforting. 6. Vegan Dim Sum: Shu Mai Dumplings: Welcome to Section five, everyone, and it's the dumpling section. So I know it's going to be a favorite in Chinese them some probably the most famous types of dumplings are probably your shrimp dumpling, but then also your shoe, my dumpling. And when classically, when you're making shoe, My what is really known for is freshly ground pork, freshly ground shrimp. And if you just have those two ingredients and have the quality be really strong. You have yourself and amazing shoe My, which we do not. So today it's going to be quite exciting because I'm going to show you how to make a ground pork, essentially from scratch. In the book, I show you all how to make actually vegan shrimp from scratch as well. I know that some people might not have access to vegan trend or maybe you don't want to be making it yourself. This recipe actually worked really well with some mushroom myths in place of the shrimp. So it is excellent. Both legs and, um, yeah, I can't wait to show you all. First thing that we're gonna do is we're going to prep the mushrooms. And I'm just chopping five or six of these. The size that we're looking for, it's going to substitute for the shrimp, but it's also going to add just a little bit more texture to the shoe. Shoe my usually is a mix of fork and then it's a mix of shrimp. Ok, So now we're gonna do then the meat for the shoe, My first that lovely pork filling. And of course it shouldn't come as a surprise to you, but I'm going to use so about a half a cup of vital wheat gluten. Megan should know this, but if you're not vegan, essentially gluten is the protein that is in wheat to quarter cup of potato starch. And the reason for that is because when you're making Schumer like normally what they asked for is a very finally, finally, finally ground pork so that when you bite into it, everything is nice and soft. And so anybody who's worked with gluten before, you know that it can get quite like last sticky, it can get quite chewing, it can actually get quite hard. So what I end up doing is I take ingredients that kind of soften the gluten back down. So things like potato starch, it could be cornstarch. This will keep your meaty parts really nice and tender. Now we're going to put in some of the flavoring agents. So this is just some garlic powder. Garlic powder may anything tastes media, a little bit of ground white pepper. These things that I'm putting in, it's usually what is used to flavor the pork. Anyways, not this yet. Let's, let's put this in little bit of sugar. And that just helps to balance out flavor. Because when you're talking about like Asian cooking, you'll realize it is not just salt and pepper. We use things like sugar, we use things like vinegar. Vinegar is very much like lemon juice, where it's not necessarily just to make things sour, but just a little bit of the soreness kind of brings out the flavor. The next thing that I have is a pretty interesting, this is a vegan pork powder. And you're gonna be like, where, where do you find these things? But what I like about these is they're usually like a chicken version of beef version, a pork version. If you have those at your disposal, you could literally make any meat that you want. Some of them are more artificial than others. So if you have an issue with that, you'll find yourself a good kind of like a vegetable broth stock cube. So right now it's just all powder. And the reason that I'm keeping it this way is because for gluten, as soon as it touches water where it starts to bunching up, it starts clumping up into its own like gigantic form. I'm going to put in my mushrooms right now, all chopped up. So can be mushrooms, that can be shrimp as well. Show you guys how this looked. Close up in case you couldn't see it. So now we're going to add in the liquid ingredients. This is literally the point of no return. Like as soon as you add liquid to this, it will become a different being mixed all of the liquid ingredients first, water, some oil. Because gluten doesn't, there's no fat. Adding that little bit of oil gives it a little bit of richness, fixes the texture up a little bit, but oil is also one of those like disruptor ingredients, just like the potato starch was, that's going to help keep the gluten from getting just Into one giant kinda really hard, rubbery clump. And I'm just gently folding everything because I don't I'm not looking to overwork it. I just wanted to combine. Good. So dumpling wrappers say that usually the ones that I get at the grocery store, they have a tendency to be a little bit too big. What I do is I end up just cutting out smaller bits. And then that way you get smaller rappers that don't flare out all over the place. Usually on top of, I guess more fancy shoe fits decorate and on the top with like some bags or something. So after the filling has rusted, I'd say the best thing to do because gluten and say Tom has a tendency to be like, really rubbery and really hard. I'm just going to take a spoon and a fork and just break them apart into little, little pieces that I'm going to be filling the dumplings with, broken up into little pieces. I'd say there's 14 pieces. So how you fill a shoe, my dumpling traditionally is there's actually no pleading involved at all. What you do is you form these circles with your hands. And then as you stuff the ground meat in, that kind of stuffing naturally has the wrapper envelop around the meat. And then it forms this kind of flowery, natural kind of ploidy pattern that you see. So we're gonna do the same thing with Satan. Only, with Satan, it is, it's a lot more rubbery, is not as valuable as ground meters. So you're going to have to do your work in shaping it with your fingers and then we're going to press it down. You can see already it's much harder than ground meat. So I'm just pressing down with my spoon. And as it presses down, I'm squishing it with my finger just like tightening that ring so that everything kinda squishes up. And then you'll see like naturally shape, hold on. Actually it becomes this like flowery shape and it has the kind of like the pleats that you go. And what you wanna do is you just want to flatten this bottom so that it can sit, sit like this. You just want to steam these guys on medium high heat for about 20 min or so because the gluten needs to be cooked first round. So we're going to have some Rockland. Where did he go? Okay. So the timer just went off so you can check out how good these guys look. Very steamy. I think they definitely a balloon a little bit as they could, so they got bigger. 7. Vegan Dim Sum: Egg Tarts: Welcome to lesson six, everyone, your dessert recipe. So everybody loves egg tarts, everybody loves making egg tarts. And so I'm going to show you kinda be easier version of how to make it with store-bought puff pastry. I will also include the original recipe for how to make that, that dough actually from scratch. It's not exactly puff pastry dough. There is a lot more and moisture to an egg tarts DO that makes the crunch less dry. It's less crispy, but a little bit of a cross between maybe like a croissant dough and then a puff pastry dough, but that takes a little bit longer. And so I will include the recipe for you all so that those who are interested in making it can make it at home. This one is going to be a lot quicker of a recipe, but at the same time, I will show you all how to work with puff pastry for something like this. Because for dainty things like egg tarts, a lot of people might actually have some trouble even with store-bought puff pastry. So I'll show you all easily how to make that and then easily how to put together, oh my gosh, it is, it is the perfect custard recipe that comes out well each time in the texture is just jiggly but soft. And it reminds me very much of like, uh, like the perfect egg custard filling. The first thing to do is to actually roll this out probably to half of its thickness because puff pastry really pops up. And if you put it in its original thickness, chances are it's going to pop up so much that it's going to take up all the rooms clustered. So you have to work fast because as soon as it melts, kind of a nightmare to work with. What I'm looking for. This one maybe slightly too big. I want there to be a pretty generous ledge on these. So actually that was, that was perfect. That bottom edge, you definitely want to make sure that the dough is firmly in there. And then, yeah, there's actually a pretty generous ledge. And the reason is because this has a tendency puff pastry for these Bartlett's to shrink, go inward when it fakes. So if you have this generous ledge here, even if it shrinks, still going to get that edge. So you can see far, but right here, that's gonna be good. Because it does shrink. You can put some weights, you can put some rice in here. Or I would also stick it into the freezer for maybe 10 min before you bake. And then that way you can ensure that the shape that you have, and this more or less the size that you have stays the size that you have. On the tin itself. There's a ledge where the Dell more or less sits on top of that. And that again is going to help it from really shrinking inside. That's actually how big that is. Using your fingernails a little bit, get this edge into, get the dough into this edge. This edge is sort of what's going to keep. Again, it's another mechanism to keep this thing from shrinking in when it bakes. Okay, So one of the things that you can do to get puff pastry to not overly puff. Just poke some holes through it and it should be fine because once it bakes and own a horse kinda close. But I do this for the sides as well because I think a lot of the times the sides like to just kinda bake in. So these have been in the freezer for about 10 min. But they did it very quickly. Good. Get out amongst first. So at this time you can add in maybe either a pinch of turmeric or some food coloring if you want it to be a little deeper in yellow color. Turmeric can be a little bit strong, so if you don't like it, you know, this is a good color to please. 8. Vegan Dim Sum: Assignment: Alright, so everybody have their pen and pencil ready. Here is assignment time. So I have given you the recipe for the rice noodles sheets. What I would like you to do is to make that. And then also the fried dough sticks from lesson three to create the fried dough rice noodle role. That was a childhood favorite of mine. I will say that a tip and trick for making your rice noodle sheets is if you don't have a big pan that you can put into a steamer, you can actually just take a shallow plate and use that instead. And you don't need a professional steamer. All you need is if you have something like this where you can just fill a pan shallowly with water, stick this down, stick a flat plate on top. You can very easily create rice noodle sheets at home without using much equipment. And I would love after you make those fried noodle sheets to tag me and then definitely upload your photos as well. I know it's a little bit of a strange combination if you've never had these fried dough noodles sticks before, but I promise you it is so, so good. Kids, adults, you all will really like it. So enjoy your assignment.