Bamboo Sticky Rice (Zongzi, Joong 咸肉棕)

• portioner: 20 servings
• aktiv tid: 600 min
• total tid: 1 day 6 hours

Ingredienser

2 lb glutinous / sticky rice

1 lb pork belly

80 bamboo leaves (3 per dumpling, +1 for backup)

1 lb peeled, split mung beans

12 oz peanuts

2 oz large dried shrimp

2 pieces Chinese sausage

10 pieces salted egg yolk

15 pieces dried shiitake mushrooms

roll of cotton string

Pork Belly Marinade

1 tsp salt

0.50 tsp five spice powder

1 tbsp light soy sauce

1 tsp chicken bouillon

1 tsp Shaoxing cooking wine

Rice Flavoring

1.5 tsp salt

1 tsp sugar

1 tbsp olive oil

Mung Bean Flavoring

1 tsp salt

Vejledning

Saturday morning:

Prepare the pork belly and let it marinate overnight.

Soak, boil, and wash the bamboo leaves, then let the leaves sit in water overnight as well.

Sunday morning:

Wash, soak, cut, and flavor the rest of our ingredients.

Sunday afternoon:

Assemble and wrap our joong with our bamboo leaves.

Boil for 3 hours.

If you’re pressed for time or if you have a lot of hands on deck, it’s possible to do all of this in a single day, by combining the marinating and soaking that occurs on Saturday and Sunday morning.

Cut the pork belly (1 lb) into roughly 1 inch pieces.

Using a bowl, add salt (1 tsp), five spice powder, light soy sauce (1 tbsp), chicken bouillon (1 tsp), and Shaoxing cooking wine (1 tsp).

Mix together the flavors, and place the meat into the bowl.

Then, mix everything with a spoon for 60-90 seconds.

At a minimum, let the pork marinate in the refrigerator for at least 3 hours. Ideally, let it marinate overnight.

Slowly rehydrate our leaves so that they become pliable enough to fold without cracking.

Clean the leaves

Here's how we do it:

Soften the leaves by soaking them in cold water in a big basin for 30-60 minutes.

You can make sure they're all submerged by filling a small bowl with water, and resting it on top of the pile of leaves. This way, the bowl will press down on the leaves as it sinks.

Using a wok or big pot, boil them for 15 to 20 minutes.

Make sure the leaves are fully submerged in cold water.

Cover with a lid.

Start out at high heat. When the wok / pot comes to a boil, set it to medium heat.

Wash each side of each leaf with a clean sponge.

If you’re planning on marinating the pork belly over night and finishing cooking the next day, then place the leaves in a bucket or big bowl of water so they stay moist overnight.

A few hours before we’re ready to start wrapping and cooking, we’ll wash, soak, chop, and flavor our remaining ingredients.

Wash and soak

Wash the rice, mung beans (1 lb), peanuts (12 oz), dried shrimp (2 oz), and dried mushrooms (15 pieces) by filling the bowl with water, massaging and mixing it, and draining the water.

Repeat this cycle 3 times per ingredient.

Soak each ingredient in water for 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes is up, thoroughly drain each of the ingredients with a colander, and set them aside.

Flavor the rice + mung beans

To the rice, we'll add salt (1.5 tsp), sugar (1 tsp), and olive oil (1 tbsp). Stir it well, mixing everything together for 60-90 seconds.

To the mung beans, we'll just add salt, and mix together for 60-90 seconds.

Create the bamboo pocket:

Arrange 2 leaves

Pair a big leaf with a small leaf

Lay them in opposite directions (one end is pointy, one end is round)

Lay them shiny side up (one side is rough, one side is shiny/smooth)

Stagger the leaves about 1 inch apart

Fold them in half, shiny side up

Make another fold about 1 inch along the bottom edge of the fold you just made.

This forms the corner of your pocket

If there are cracks along the center of a particular leaf, you can either throw it away (that's why we boiled so many extra), or you can cover it up with a second leaf.

Fill the pocket

Each time we add the rice and mung beans, we'll aim to spread it evenly across the pocket.

Enclose the dumpling

Take a third leaf and wrap it around the pocket, positioned high enough so that there's enough clearance to fully enclose the dumpling.

Fold both sides inwards towards the filling. Then, fold the extra leaves down towards the bottom of the dumpling.

Tie it together

Using our cotton cooking twine, we'll start by holding the string down with our finger on the leaf, with about 6 inches of string dangling (we'll use this in the middle to create a knot.)

Make several loops around the dumpling width-wise, and then make a double cross with the 6-inch string that was dangling. We'll use this cross to transition to creating a loop length-wise. Then, we'll double-knot our string.

Cut the excess string, and cut any excess leaf that you don't want.

Finally, we'll load up a big pot with our joong, and fill it with cold water.

Make sure all of the dumplings are fully submerged, and cover the pot.

Set the stove to high heat. Once it's boiling, lower it to medium heat, and let it cook for 3 hours.

While this is cooking, the water level will probably drop over time due to evaporation. Set a timer for every 30 minutes to check that the joong are fully submerged, adding boiled water if necessary. It’ll help to have a kettle of boiled water on hand that you can keep reheating.

Once we've reached 3 hours, we're done! Time to eat :)

Notater

Make sure not to soak the ingredients for too long - especially for the rice and mung beans, since they will get bigger and softer the longer we soak them.

If some of the mushrooms aren’t yet fully rehydrated, just continue soaking them after you’ve chopped them.