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Chinese Name: 虾饺
English Name: Har Gow; Shrimp Dumpling
Category: Cantonese Cuisine粤菜
Main Ingredients: Shrimp
Har Gow虾饺 is a special snack in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, belonging to the Cantonese cuisine粤菜 department. Shrimp dumplings are transparent, exquisite, smooth, and delicious. They are the traditional beauty of Guangdong teahouses and restaurants. Cantonese drink tea with a cage of shrimp dumplings. Excellent shrimp dumplings, with white skin as ice, thin as paper, translucent, and vaguely visible meat filling, taste smooth, fresh, and delicious.
Har Gow was founded in a small family teahouse in Wufeng Township五凤乡, Wucun伍村, a suburb of Guangzhou in the early 20th century. It has a history of 100 years. Wufeng township of Wucun village is rich in fish and shrimp. The teahouse master makes meat stuffing by matching shrimp meat with pork and bamboo shoots. At that time, the outer skin of shrimp dumplings was made of rice flour with a thick cortex. However, due to the delicious taste of shrimp dumplings, it soon spread.
After the introduction of Har Gow in the major teahouses in the city, after improvement, the raw rice flour is changed into “Chengfen澄粉 (starch淀粉)”, and then a layer of starch noodles is wrapped with one or two shrimp. The size of Har Gow is appropriate for one bite, with excellent effect, and is more attractive to guests.
The traditional Har Gow is half-moon-shaped, with twelve folds of spider belly. The fillings are shrimp, meat, and bamboo shoots. They taste delicious, smooth and delicious.
The shape of shrimp dumplings is very particular. The pleats should be slender and clear, and the number should reach more than 10 pleats (13 pleats are the most perfect), which is like a curved comb. Therefore, the previous shrimp dumplings had the elegant name “curved comb dumplings弯梳饺”. When making shrimp dumplings, the standard of 10-13 pleats is not to show off skills but to reserve enough space for shrimp meat and exude juice.
In addition to the classic comb-shaped shrimp dumplings, you can also eat the image of white rabbit dumplings. Such delicious and the good-looking dim sum has been rated by foreign media as “fine food like art艺术品般的美食”.
It is not easy to make a shrimp dumpling with perfect taste and shape. Without years of practice, you can’t make a good-looking and delicious shrimp dumpling, and you can’t be a top dessert chef. The most ideal shrimp dumpling skin is also called “mandarin duck skin鸳鸯皮”, which is half thin and half thick (thin surface and thick bottom). In this way, the steamed shrimp dumpling is not easy to reveal its stuffing and tastes good.
How to make Har Gow?
Ingredients：
- 150g starch
- 200g shrimp
- Two eggs
- Moderate spinach
- An appropriate amount of onion
- A proper amount of ginger
- A proper amount of salt
- Appropriate cooking wine
- A proper amount of oil
Instruction:
- Step 1, Wash the spinach, chop it up, boil water, and then take out the spinach to remove the water so that the oxalic acid in the spinach can be removed.
- Step 2, Fry the eggs and stir them more when frying, so that the scrambled eggs can be more broken.
- Step 3, Chop the prepared onions and ginger.
- Step 4, Peel and cut the shrimp into pieces.
- Step 5, Put these prepared ingredients into the basin and add salt.
- Step 6, Add cooking wine and salt and then add edible oil.
- Step 7, Use boiled water and noodles. Knead the dough after mixing. It’s best to add some lard when kneading.
- Step 8, After waking up for more than ten minutes, rub the noodles into strips and cut them into small squeezed pieces.
- Step 9, Put a squeeze on the panel and press it with a knife to form a dumpling skin.
- Step 10, Put the mixed stuffing on the pressed skin and wrap it like dumplings.
- Step 11, Put a piece of edible steaming paper in the steamer to avoid sticking to the pot.
- Step 12, Steam the dumplings in a steamer for 7-8 minutes.
