← Nouns Cooking · Vietnamese

Ingredients

• 200 ml whole milk, lukewarm
• 100 g Sugar
• 1 tsp instant yeast (3 g)
• 400 g self-raising flour, sifted
• 1 tbsp Vegetable oil
• 350 g fatty pork mince
• ½ Onion, finely chopped
• 10 g dried wood ear mushrooms, soaked for 20 min, drained and minced
• 2 tbsp Oyster sauce
• 1 tsp Sugar
• 1 tsp Toasted sesame oil
• ½ tsp Black pepper
• ¼ tsp Salt
• 2 Chinese sausages, sliced
• 12 quail eggs, hard-boiled and peeled (or 3 hen’s eggs, quartered)
• 2 tbsp white vinegar, for the steamer water

Method

1. Stir the sugar into the warm milk until dissolved, then add the yeast. Add the flour and oil and knead for 8–10 min until smooth and soft. Cover and leave somewhere warm for 1 hour until puffy and about half again in size.
2. Mix the pork, onion, wood ear, oyster sauce, sugar, sesame oil, pepper and salt. Divide into 12 portions and wrap each around a quail egg and a few slices of sausage. Chill while you shape the dough.
3. Knock back the dough, divide into 12 and roll each piece into a 12 cm circle, keeping the edges thinner than the middle.
4. Put a ball of filling in the centre, then gather and pleat the edges up around it and pinch tightly at the top to seal. Set each bun on a square of baking paper and leave to rest for 15 min.
5. Bring a steamer of water to the boil with the vinegar (it keeps the buns white). Steam the buns over high heat for 15 min, spaced apart, until puffed and the filling is cooked through (71°C / 160°F).
6. Turn off the heat and wait 5 min before lifting the lid, so the buns don’t wrinkle or collapse. Serve warm.

Tips

• Wrap a tea towel around the steamer lid so condensation doesn’t drip onto the buns.
• Cooked buns freeze well; re-steam them from frozen for 10–12 min.

Sources

Written in our own words after cross-checking these recipes:

Vicky Pham Wok and Kin