Xiao-long-bao, often abbreviated as XLB, is a type of dumpling that still have soup inside as you eat it. As it was invented near Shanghai in the village of Nanxiang, it was often called "Shanghai Dumplings". Visually, it looks like a round white dumpling, slightly larger than a siu-mai (pork dumpling), and roughly the size of har-gow (shrimp dumpling).
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| Xiao-long-bao, with one in a Chinese spoon for scale |
One thing to note about XLB is they are hot, and if you are not careful enough extracting the dumpling from the steamer basket, you can break the skin, and lose all the soup inside the dumpling. While it is only a tiny bit, that is the whole point of eating the XLB. Because the soup inside is hot, you don't plop it into your mouth either. Put one into the Chinese spoon, then carefully bite a small hole (or use the chopstick) and taste the rich broth inside the dumpling. THEN take a slightly larger bite. This is not a chicken nugget.
The XLB can be found all over Chinatown, but not all of them are the same quality. A good one is supposed to have more meat than the wrapping, and the broth incorporated within must be a good amount so you can taste such.
The origin of the XLB is actually well established. It was invented by a Ming-Xien Huang. He was the apprentice / adopted son of a snack shack owner in the village of Nanxiang, near Shanghai. When the owner died in 1871, he took over the place, and instead of selling just sweets, he will also sell savory stuff like wontons, baozi (meat buns), and noodles. His meat buns are nicely proportioned and very filling, but they were quickly copied by other shops. So he decided to reinvent the meat bun, into what's today known as XLB.
The recipe is pretty obvious: the broth is made by making "aspic" out of chicken broth... basically, a congealing agent plus regular chicken broth. Once that's done, aspic is added to the ground pork in a precise ratio so when wrapped into the dumping, it will remain solid, but when steamed, all that turns back into liquid to be enjoyed. However, the details are hard to master and replicate.
Huang, the inventor of XLB, was very particular in the manufacturing of XLB. Every dumpling must have exactly 14 pleats. He will also test one per steamed basket. He takes that one, drain the broth, to be measured against a tiny sauce dish. If there is not enough broth to fill the tiny sauce dish, the entire basket is dumped. This results in very consistent quality, but very little innovation or variation.
Later, some of the his apprentices went out to make their own variations on the formula. In China you will find dozens of variations on the base version. Some are made with crab flavor. Ding Tai Fong is a famous XLB seller from Taiwan, but they're not in Chinatown. Closest is down near San Jose, California.
Bonus trivia: XLBs are often called Bruce Lees in Spain. The local restaurants apparently got tired of explaining "Xiao-long" and decided to just use Bruce Lee's name, since Bruce Lee's Chinese name is Lee Xiao-Long. It's a slightly different character (homonyms), but good marketing.
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