Recipes » Snacks » 9 Best Baozi Recipes [Chinese Steamed Bun Ideas]
Best Chinese baozi steamed bao bun recipes. Find easy and delicious filling ideas, including vegetarian, chicken, pork belly, as well as gluten-free options.
It’s been a few years since I lived in China, but still to this day I crave the food I had on my doorstep while living in Nanjing. And no food filled me with as much joy as baozi.
Baozi are meat or vegetable fillings, wrapped in dough and steamed to perfection. There’s something brilliantly satisfying about them, and although they might seem like an appetizer, they are filling enough to make for a good breakfast or lunch meal on the go.
Here are nine of the best ways to enjoy the steamed, savory bun. I’m off to reminisce about Chinese street food.
Pork & Napa Cabbage
Ground pork is often the go-to meat filling for Chinese bao buns, and it’s easy to see why. The meat pairs perfectly with the sweet and heat flavors so prevalent in Chinese cooking, while the fat and moisture in ground pork help soak up all those flavors into one bite.
Our pork and napa cabbage gluten-free bao buns demonstrate this beautifully. Made with an easy store-bought flour blend, the dough matches the bouncy texture we want in baozi. But it’s all about the filling, which features the perfect combination of sweet and savory.
Carrot, Ginger and Pork
Practice really does make perfect for the making of baozi, particularly when it comes to making the dough. But oh boy is it worth it. In this recipe, the carrot’s flavor, when mixed with pork and ginger, is simply divine. This gives your baozi a thick, buttery taste that isn’t exactly typical but isn’t completely off-track either.
Barbecue Minced Pork
These buns are made with a char siu filling (bbq pork) and are quick and easy to make. Make sure that you knead the dough until it becomes elastic and smooth. Also, get a nice fine light low-gluten flour if you want white buns.
Dim sum restaurants often offer steamed buns made with chicken and vegetable filling, which is what this recipe emulates perfectly. Tender chicken pieces are wrapped and steamed the dough for a soft and fluffy bao bun. Also filled with napa cabbage and shiitake mushrooms, there’s a lot of savory flavors in each mouthful.
Shiitake Mushroom and Cabbage
A vegetarian baozi recipe, this is a great meat-free alternative for bao fans. The filling of shiitake mushrooms and cabbage offers plenty of fiber to keep you feeling full.
Take the time to practice folding and pleating your baozi, it’s the most difficult part of making them. It might take a while for you to refine your technique, but the results are worth the effort.
Nutella
A twist on the traditional savory steamed bun, this recipe has a yummy filling of Nutella. To add a bit more heft to the filling you can also add banana or peanut butter.
If you don’t have access to store-bought wrappers though, it’s easy to make your own with some dough rounds cut into circles about five inches in diameter as well as some pleating pastry sheets that can be found at most Asian supermarkets.
A good tip to make baozi as chewy and fluffy as possible is proper kneading, developing that gluten fully. I use my stand mixer for that. Don’t be shy! I tend to knead it for 15-20 minutes if not longer sometimes.
Also, allowing the dough to properly rest as it ferments away will give gluten enough time to relax. Those long gluten strands create the chewy fluffy texture everybody loves. Ensure the steamer is fully going before placing the raw buns in it. That would give them the proper spring to fluff up.
Gluten-Free Beef Steamed Buns
Soft and fluffy steamed buns packed with a delightfully gingery, salty beef blend. This recipe takes a delicious savory beef filling and wraps it in gluten-free steamed dough. It works much better than you might think.
Braised Oxtail
These oxtail bao buns have a deep and rich flavor that’ll have you coming back for more. You’ll need to simmer the oxtails in a mixture of soy sauce, rice wine, and ginger for four hours until they’re tender. The filling will have a deep flavor from the braising liquid as well as some scallions added with the final steps. To make this baozi a little more traditional, add some chopped cilantro before steaming them for optimal flavor.
Vegan Mushroom and Tofu
Making versions of classic Asian dishes isn’t always easy, but this recipe does it perfectly. Instead of traditional pork belly or shredded chicken, these steamed buns use mushroom, tofu, and a good deal of seasoning. It works beautifully.
Bao Buns (pronounced “bow”), but also known as a 'steamed buns' or 'baozi' 包子, are a delicious, warm, fluffy treat of stuffing wrapped inside a sweet, white dough. Made with a mix of flour, yeast, sugar, baking powder, milk and oil, the bao is a tad sweeter than its closely related cousin, the dumpling.
Mantou (traditional Chinese: 饅頭; simplified Chinese: 馒头), often referred to as Chinese steamed bun, is a white and soft type of steamed bread or bun popular in northern China.
Kaya baozi is one of the sweetest bao, filled with a jam made of coconut and egg. Nai huang bao is filled with a sweet custard made up of corn flour, custard powder, butter, sugar and vanilla. Cai bao is filled with various vegetables. Zhimabao is filled with black sesame paste – a Chinese staple in desserts.
Any rush of cool air could potentially make the buns collapse. If you're making fluffy yeasted buns, let the buns sit covered in the steamer for an extra 5 minutes after the heat has been turned off. This resting time is crucial. If you open the lid too quickly, the cool air from outside might deflate the buns.
A standard steamed bao typically contains about 200-250 calories, positioning it as a moderate-calorie food option. Additionally, bao serves as a source of protein and dietary fiber, particularly when made with whole grain flours or filled with vegetables or lean meats.
Bao or Baozi are said to have been invented in China during the 3rd century by a military strategist called Zhuge Liang [181-234]. They were first named Mantou but over time they began to be referred to as baozi or bao meaning to wrap in Mandarin.
Steamed buns made with lean meats and vegetables can be a healthy option, as they are typically low in fat and calories and high in protein and fiber. However, some buns may be made with high-fat meats or sweet fillings that are high in sugar, which can contribute to an unhealthy diet if consumed in large quantities.
Mántóu (馒头), also known as Mó (馍), refers to plain steamed buns which originated from China. They are usually made of white wheat flour, but other ingredients, such as corn flour, sweet potato, pumpkin, are sometimes added to the dough. As a popular staple, Mantou has a firm position on Chinese families' dinner table.
BAOZI are chinese stuffed breads. A baozi, also known as bao or bau, is a type of steamed, filled bun or bread-like item in Chinese cuisine. In its bun-like aspect it is very similar to the traditional Chinese mantou, but baozi has filling.
We always serve these buns with thinly sliced carrot and/or cucumber, fresh cilantro or mint, avocado, chiles, and sesame seeds. A few pickled jalapeños or the banh mi pickles from this recipe would also be excellent here.
Steamed buns made with raised flour are seen throughout China and are what is usually referred to as mantou. Steamed xiaolongbao made with partially raised flour are more commonly seen in the south. This means that their skin is tender, smoother, and somewhat translucent, rather than being white and fluffy.
In order to get white bao, many Chinese American cooks use low-gluten (low-protein), bleached cake flour for their bao dough; cake flour is milled from soft wheat and has 8 to 10% gluten/protein. To make up for the flour's lack of gluten a touch of vinegar is added to result in more chewy dough.
You can use bleached bao flour if you can find it in an Asian supermarket – this will give your bao that classic bright white look. Plain flour is much easier to find so it's what I use.
Some parts of the buns have brown and yellow spots after steaming and the texture is chewy. This is a very common issue for steamed buns and it's usually caused by a sudden increase and/or decrease in pressure while steaming. To avoid it, you should: Slowly heat up the bun dough in the steamer.
To Summarize. In summary, bao buns are made from fermented yeast dough, while dumplings are only made from wheat flour without the yeast. Since bao dough contains yeast, it needs more time to rise and results in thinner skin than dumplings. In terms of cooking, baos are usually steamed, baked, and sometimes pan-fried.
Another major difference that sets pork buns apart from the wider category of steamed bao is the dough that is used to make the buns or the dumpling itself. The distinction between pork bun dough and steamed bao dough lies in the composition and texture.
As mentioned before Bao Buns are also commonly referred to as “bao, bay, pow, pau, paoare, Mantou, baozi, humbow, nunu, bakpao, bausak, however the most common terminology will be Bao or Steamed Buns. These soft delicious Chinese treats have been in existence for hundreds of years!
Introduction: My name is Aracelis Kilback, I am a nice, gentle, agreeable, joyous, attractive, combative, gifted person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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