While Traveler Nell is away in her homeland I have had a lot of time to fill up, as well as I have been left to fend for myself. I decided to mash these two problems together to form one solution… Make myself Dim Sims.
Dim sims, or “Dimmies” are Chinese dumplings for the the Australian palate. They are a particular favorite of Traveler Nell. And while there are countless varieties her preference is for the Pork, Prawn and Cabbage.
In all honesty we have been planning on trying to home-make these for some time. In fact, a while back when we found ourselves in Chinatown, we picked up a package of wonton wrappers. Knowing that I had these in my pantry I decided to put them together this weekend.
With Traveler Nell out of town I had to determine a mix for the filling. I opted for this Food.com.au recipe as a starting off point.
So this past Sunday night I ventured into the fray. Essentially tripling the recipe, it ended up looking like this…
The Filling Mix for the dumplings. Ground pork, shrimp, cabbage, scallions, fresh ginger, soy sauce, sesame oil, eggs and corn starch.
After making the filling I pulled out the wrappers…
They were stale.
And moldy.
So needless to say I was disappointed. I had over a kilo of filling and nowhere to put it. While on lunch the next day I went to a local hippy foods establishment and grabbed a couple packages of egg roll wrappers. Then, as soon as I got home, the steamer was set to HIGH and I set to assembling.
A dim sim is supposed to be larger than a typical dumpling. That said, my dimmies were extremely generously filled. After I had three ready I placed them in the steamer.
Raw dumpling in the steamer basket
Let me take a break from the blog to do a little algebra
Raw Pork + Raw Shrimp = Bad News
That in mind I made sure to steam them for a generous 15 (closer to 20) minutes. Nerdishly I took the internal temperature of the dumplings before opening them up. The all registered around170° F. (75° Celsius)
Serving suggestion, with low sodium soy sauce.
The first one out was opened in the kitchen for examination. I wanted to double check the doneness and give it a try. It met my (admittedly low) bar of edibility. I put the remaining two on the plate with the low sodium soy sauce and allowed them to cool as I wrapped the remainder, prepping them for the freezer.
With one of the dumplings cut open
Detail of the cooked filling.
I was amazed how easy it was to put these Dim Sims together. It was ridiculously simple (As long as you have wrappers!) and I will not hesitate to make these again. I’ll probably try to make them a skosh smaller as I only got a dozen dumplings out of my supersized adaptation.