Since establishing Fruit is not a Pudding, I haven’t had much time for other kitchen projects, but a hankering for some proper dim sum prompted by the numerous Chinese New Year features on the TV and offers in the supermarkets had me searching all over for a gluten free steamed dumpling recipe. I found several that I thought could be adapted, but settled on this one.
The kind folks at Glutafin offered some advice on how I could replace the wheat starch in the recipe with their multi-purpose white mix which has GF wheat starch as it’s primary ingredient. Unfortunately the Glutafin mix is only available on prescription, I had been saving my sample box for special purposes. If you don’t have the mix or can’t tolerate GF wheat starch, perhaps have a look at this recipe instead – you can replace the taro with potato. If my experience with sweet dumplings is anything to go by, the potato should give the dough a good pliable texture.
Gluten Free Steamed Prawn Dumplings
Makes 16 dumplings
Ingredients
For the filling:
- 175g pack of medium sized cooked prawns
- 4 or 5 water chestnuts (the rest will be great in a stirfry or salad)
- 3 tsp cornflour
- ½ an egg white
- 1 tsp Chinese rice wine
- A dash of mirin
- A dash of toasted sesame oil
- A dash of gluten free tamari soy sauce
- A squeeze of cheat’s ginger (or use fresh of course!)
For the dough:
- 90g Glutafin Select White Multi-Purpose Mix
- A pinch of xanthan gum
- 80ml hot chicken stock (I use Kallo stock cubes)
- 15g tapioca flour (optional – can use more Glutafin mix, I liked the silky texture of the tapioca)
Method:
- Make the filling: chop the prawns into small pieces of your preferred size and put into a bowl. Finely chop the water chestnuts (or push through a garlic press) and add along with the other filling ingredients. Give it a good mix and set to one side.
- Make the dough: weigh the Glutafin mix into a bowl and add the xanthan gum. Pour in the hot stock and mix well with chopsticks to form a sticky batter/dough. If the batter is too liquidy, add a little more flour until you can handle it as one piece.
-
Making pleats in the dough
Scatter some tapioca flour onto a board and knead the dough thoroughly, adding more tapioca flour a little at a time until it become a smooth dough that doesn’t stick to your hands.
- Roll the dough into a sausage and cut into 16 pieces with a knife. Store them under cling film to stop them drying out.
- Form each piece of dough into a ball then flatten to make a 3 ½ inch circle. You can either do this by using a rolling pin, or by putting it under baking parchment and flattening with a pan. I found the easiest way was to flatten between your hands.
- Form overlapping pleats around the edge of 2/3 of the circle of dough to form a little cup. Place a teaspoon of your filling into the cup, then press the edges together to seal. You shouldn’t need anything to stick it.
- When the dumplings are formed, place carefully into a steamer over hot water and steam for 7 minutes. Remove the steamer from the pan and leave to rest for 3 minutes before serving. We had them with a dipping sauce made from tamari and mirin.
We don’t have a bamboo steamer, but our normal one worked pretty well
We were pretty pleased with the results! Very authentic-tasting dumplings with a great dough texture. The dough was a little more yellow and not transparent like you get in a restaurant, but otherwise satisfied my hankerings. If you aren’t inclined to make dumplings, Marks & Spencer sell steamed prawn dumplings that don’t contain gluten. They microwave pretty quickly and I can heartily recommend them.
The Coeliactivist 