Prawn Dumplings - Har Gow

It's really unfortunate that many shopkeepers do not stock up on wheat starch. It's a discriminatory practice, if you ask me. Discriminatory to those who might have a sudden craving to make prawn Har Gow dumplings but cannot do so because there is no way of obtaining the main ingredient for the dumpling shell. 

So, as I do in many cases, I analysed and came up with a solution...a substitute if you please. The question I had to ask myself was this: What do I substitute in place of wheat starch to get that translucent dumpling wrapper that I love so much? For the longest time - Okay, about 10 minutes- I couldn't think of any substitute. But then I looked at various photos of the Har Gow dumpling dough and it appeared to be whiter than most doughs. It was like a large quantity of clumped up white facepaint. Then, I looked around the house for the whitest flour I could find, which turned out to be arrowroot flour. So, I decided to experiment with that. 

Prawn Har Gow made with Arrowroot flour

Recipe for the Arrowroot flour based Har Gow dumplings

 

The Filling

You need 200 grams of de-shelled, de-veined prawns. 

Where I live, the only way you get fresh prawns is if you go to a stinky fish shop and you know me, I'm so not the stinky fish shop kind of girl. I buy my stuff frozen. Of course, when they thaw, they do tend to shrink a bit in size and release some of their liquid. But all it all, I think they are worth it especially since they are frozen right after they are caught so, in comparison, they are fresher than the apparent fresh ones in the shops!

Cut each prawn into 3-4 pieces and then sandwich them between plastic wrap and mash them with a masher. Then, remove the mashed prawns from the wrapper and finely chop them up.

Put the prawns into a bowl, add half inch of grated ginger, one clove of grated garlic, a tablespoon of finely diced bamboo shoot (this is optional but most har gows that I have had come with bits of bamboo shoots in them. You can get bamboo shoots at INA market. Don't forget to rinse them first as most bamboo shoots come preserved in salt), two teaspoons of soya sauce, a teaspoon of sesame oil and 1/2 teaspoon of cornflour and mix till well combined.

The Dough

This dough makes about 14 dumplings. 

Add 70 grams of arrowroot flour (or 70 grams of wheat starch, if you can find it) and 20 grams of cornflour (corn starch) to a bowl with a pinch of salt and 1.5 tablespoons of vegetable oil. Bring about 105 ml of water to a boil and add the hot water into the bowl of flour and mix well till it resembles a very wet dough. Leave it uncovered for about 5 minutes and then, knead the dough. If on kneading you feel that the dough is a bit too wet, sprinkle some arrowroot flour on the dough and knead till you get a dough ball like below.

The White Arrowroot flour dough

Separate into 14 equal parts and form into flat circles of around 3.5 inch to 4 inch in diameter. Make sure you try to roll out the dough as thin as possible to get that fine translucency. As you can see from the picture below, I cannot roll out doughs to save my life!

Making the Dumpling

The easiest way to fill these wrappers would be to add about 3/4th of a teaspoon of the filling into the middle of each wrapper, to fold them into semicircles and closing the seams of the wrapper. But you can also do it like in the picture below. Also, since the base for my wrappers is arrowroot flour and not wheat starch, there is one noticeable difference in the final Har Gow: It is not as translucent as I would have liked it to be. But, hey, you play with the cards you are dealt with right?

Pre-steamed dumplings

Steam in a steamer for 6-8 minutes or until the prawns turn pink-ish.

Enjoy!