Easy Chinese Shrimp Bao Buns

My mom and I took a trip to NYC several years ago and fell in love with China Town. The Dim Sum was to die for! So I recently set out to make Bao Buns at home…only to find that the dough is incredibly hard to make and manage. I’m a baker, and am pretty comfortable with dough in general but when several different web sites and books tell me that it’s difficult, I begin to wonder. And look for a short cut. And then my mom and I found one. Pillsbury Canned Biscuit Dough. It’s amazing. There are constantly coupons for everything Pillsbury in the paper and I always collect them because when they go on a big sale, I can get so many different kinds of tubes for free. I know it’s not necessarily ‘cheffy’ but this recipe was so incredibly delicious that I don’t feel guilty about it one little bit. And neither should you. So here’s what I did…
-In a food processor I put 1 lb. of peeled, cleaned shrimp along with… 2 green onions, (roughly chopped), 2 tsp fresh ginger, 2 tsp mirin, 2 tsp oyster or fish sauce, 2 tsp toasted sesame oil, 2 tsp soy sauce, a pinch of white pepper, 1 egg and 1 TB of cornstarch.
-I pulsed everything until it became paste-like.
-Then I joyously cracked open that blue tube and separated the biscuits, (I used 2 cans of the Jumbo Buttermilk Biscuits), then flattened each one until they were about 1/2 their original thickness.
-I put about a tablespoon’s worth of the shrimp mixture into the center of each flattened
biscuit and folded up the sides to create a beggars purse-like shape. (**Do not overfill the buns or get any of the filling on the outside of the dough because it will not close.)
-I then placed the buns in a steamer basket lined with parchment paper, with the water on a rolling, high boil and steamed with the lid on for 15 minutes until the buns firmed up.
(**If yours puff up and stick together in the steamer, (like mine did), don’t panic (like I did), they pull apart very easily.
-Allow to cool slightly and then transfer to an airtight container so they won’t dry out.
-Serve with a dipping sauce of… mostly soy sauce flavored with a splash of sesame oil, a good squeeze of honey, toasted sesame seeds and scallions.
Dim Sum good buns.
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