Description
Siopao Asado is a Filipino steamed bun prepared with a sweet white steamed dough filled with sweet soy sauce and garlic braised pulled pork.
Ingredients
Bun
- 3 cups dumpling flour + 1/2 cup for dusting
- 200ml warm water
- 1/2 cup + 2 tsp white sugar
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 tbsp shortening or vegetable oil (use shortening to make it whiter in colour)
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 2 1/2 tsp active dry yeast
- 1/4 cup lukewarm water
Filling
- 400g pork loin, cubed
- 2 tbsp soy sauce
- 2 tbsp hoisin sauce
- 2 tbsp brown sugar
- 2 tbsp cornstarch, dissolved in 1/3 cup water
- 4 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 tsp Chinese five spice powder
- 1 cup water
- oil
- salt
Water for Steaming
- water, for steaming
- 1 tbsp of vinegar per litre of water, for steaming
Instructions
Filling
- On a pan add oil and sauté garlic then add pork, stir fry pork for 3 minutes.
- Add water, soy sauce, brown sugar and 5 spice powder. Bring to a boil and simmer in low heat for 2 hours or until the meat breaks apart, mixing occasionally to prevent burning, add additional water if needed.
- Once meat has broken down add hoisin sauce then thicken it with cornstarch mixture, simmer further until sauce thickens.
- Season with salt. Turn heat off then set aside.
Steamed Buns
- Mix together yeast, 2 tsp sugar, and 1/4 cup lukewarm water. Set aside in a warm location for 30 minutes.
- Mix remaining ingredients except for the baking powder then knead dough until dough surface smooth and texture is elastic; occasionally dust the board with dumpling flour. Place in a greased bowl then place in a warm location, set aside for 2 hours. After two hours the size would be doubled.
- Deflate dough then spread on floured board. Add the baking powder evenly then knead for 5 minutes.
- Divide into 8 – 10 pieces then roll them thin, place a good amount of the meat mixture in the middle then seal them on top, place buns in a greased paper. Do with the remaining dough and filling. Set aside in a warm location for 30 minutes.
- Prepare your steamer by pouring water and vinegar. Vinegar will make sure your buns are white.
- Place buns into steamer container then steam siopao for 20-25 minutes.
These looks great – a like the idea of this recipe.
🙂 Mandy
★★★★★
This is like our Siew Pow but you do get many other fillings inside from chicken to the sweet tau sha peng too.
Are there any versions with no meat whatsoever??? perhaps not 🙂
You have no idea how pork steamed buns have been taking up space in my brain lately. I had absolutely out of this world ones on a food tour of Little Tokyo in Los Angeles and have been dreaming about them ever since. I am so eternally grateful for this recipe. Now I just need a good steamer. Can you believe I don’t own one?!!!
★★★★★
Oh yummy yummy yum! I just had one of these today 🙂 Walked past a Chinese Bakery, while running errands and I couldn’t resist. LOVE your picture!! I am going to try your recipe, as soon as I get some time!
★★★★★
Wow, this one’s yummy for sure! I’d love to try making this but will have to make substitution of chicken for pork. I wonder of it would change the taste.
★★★★★
I love asado siapao. unfortunately we only have one good place in town that has it.
★★★★★
You definitely fooled me because I would have thought this would be a chinese type of recipe. This looks absolutely delicious. I have pork in my freezer and now I know what to do with it. Very nice
★★★★★
Wow, these look amazing! Thanks for sharing the recipe! 🙂
★★★★★
can i skip the hoisin sauce and the chinese spices? can i just leave them out or is there any substitutes?
You can but it will not taste and smell the same, you can also replace the hoisin with 1 tbsp oyster sauce + 1 tbsp brown sugar, for the spices you can use star anise and bay leaf instead.
I can’t find pork stock, do you think it’d be better to do vegetable, chicken, or beef?
Chicken stock would be the next best thing
I’m making this now, is the dough supposed to be really stiff and dense? I can’t really get it into a smooth ball.
It should be something like a bread dough, stiff but not too hard. Then when your fill it you still need to rise it to double its size
These were really yummy! I made a bunch of changes like adding scallions to the filling but they were really good!
How did the dough turned up, I was a bit nervous for a while there when you told me it was stiff and dense.
I added more water and a little bit of oil to it to loosen it up, and it turned out great!
★★★★★
hi raymund,
where are based if I may ask? i’m in the phils. my siopao dough is yellowish, i am wondering what brand of all purpose flour did you use?
I am in New Zealand so we definitely have different brands, but if you find it yellowish you can use bleached flour or you might find in Binondo a special flour they use for siopao
I hate to be dense, but what is dumpling flour? I dont think i’ve seen that in Canada.
I buy it in Asian shops and haven’t seen it in supermarkets here in New Zealand. I think its a special flour for this purpose though I have used regular flour before it does not yield the same texture as what you can get on Chinese restaurants so when I saw this type of flour in Asian Grocer I gave it a try and whoalla I got the texture that I wanted.
I tried this recipe but when I steam the buns, the dumpling dough starts discoloration (brownish). What am I doing wrong?
Did you add vinegar to the water, just 2 tbsps will help. Also you need to put some muslin cloth on top so the hot water droplets wont touch the buns.
I got it. 2 tbsp of vinegar did help. I dont know how I missed that from your instruction. Thx so much! From the meat to the dough, it was ver delicious!!!
what is dumpling flour
Its a type of flour used to have that same texture of steamed bun in Asian restaurants. You can get them in Asian groceries.
Gotta look for that dumpling flour.. ASADO wuhoo!!
Thanks for sharing this recipe. I will make this on the weekend =)
★★★★★
Great recipe. Love the flavour. Although these are time consuming to make they are not difficult and definitely worth the effort.
I partly agree because if this is your favourite dish and live in a place where this is not commercially available then this is the next best thing, doing it at home.
I just made this…the buns so big and white. The only problem I had, it has dark brown spots. Why is this so? Please help me…I need to make this perfectly coz this is my favorite.
The dark spots happens when water drips on the buns while steaming. Vinegar in the water reduces that from happening but if it still does you can put muslin cloth between your cover and the buns it catches those steam that drips.
But I used cloth on this. I’ll try a thicker cloth next time. Wanna keep on trying til I got the perfect one. I like your recipe! Do you have any recipe for the sauce? Thank you.
★★★★★
For the sauce its just store bought hoisin sauce. It looks like this http://amzn.to/1t0393v
Can i use all purpose flour instead of dumpling flour?
Yes you can but it will not be as white as the ones using dumpling flour. The texture will be quite different as well.
Why my siopao gets hard when it gets cold. What did I do wrong?
Do you live in a cold place?
For some reason I couldn’t get my siopao fluffy,I used plain flour and the result of my siopao is yellowish. Can I use white rice flour?
I didn’t use the bun recipe as I didn’t have all the specific ingredients, but the filling is five stars!
Except for an additional 1/2 tsp chili powder, I followed the recipe to a t. Soooo good! Saved in my recipes list. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for trying it out! Nice to hear the great result
I really liked the flavor of the filling. Made it today and everyone enjoyed it!
★★★★★
Thanks for trying it out
Taste perfect ! Thanks for sharing.
★★★★★
Thanks for trying it out!
Filling was delicious! I added a knob of ginger while preparing it and took it out before adding the hoisin. I ran into problems with the dough though. Being an experienced bread baker, I found it way too sticky, even after adding the half cup of flour for dusting. It may be because I used cake flour (no dumpling flour here), so it’s my fault. I added almost an entire additional cup of flour. Nevertheless, the siopao turned out great. Thank you!
★★★★
Thanks for letting us know of the result. If you can get some dumpling flour, it would be best, can get it in Asian shops. For an alternative, all purpose flour will be the the best substitute.