How do you cook these buns?

[Binky Profile]

Vegetarian buns, bought at local Asian supermarket. I imagined there would be some cooking instructions but no - the back of the pack has ingredients only, listed in ten languages.

Going by the front, do you think I should steam them for 7-10 minutes? They are frozen, so should I defrost first? What about using a microwave? Any ideas gratefully received

[Lusciouslush Profile]

I'd defrost & steam those Binky - cooking from frozen you'd never be sure the filling was cooked/warmed thro' properly since they're quite thick.

[Binky Profile]

This is the finished dinner: Singapore Noodles with Quorn, vegetarian spring rolls and steam buns. Delicious!

(did the steam buns for 12 minutes to be sure. Piping hot inside when pulled open).


free picture upload

[Stokey Sue Profile]

I have had similar buns from Iceland and successfully cooked from frozen in my microwave veg steamer

How were they?

[karadekoolaid Profile]

I have had similar buns from Iceland

I didn´t know they made steamed buns in Iceland, I thought it was all fermented shark!

(´Salright, Sue, I was just leaving anyway )

[Binky Profile]

I did the buns in a standard s/s steamer. I took one out after 10 minutes to check the filling was done (it was) and left the rest in the steamer with the lid on. They came out when the rest of the meal was done (not a long wait, maybe 5 minutes for the spring rolls to become crispier).

The taste of the bun was very good, lots of mushroom in there I think. The texture of the bun was interesting too, very chewy and like a sort of light airy bread. I was expecting a filo pastry taste or something similar.

[Sakkarin Profile]

I made some from scratch when I was working my way through the Fuchsia Dunlop book (back in the Beeb days), and although it was a long time ago I don't remember it being particularly difficult, although I bought special extremely white Chinese dumpling flour back then.

I remember very well that in the final rundown I used Sunflower's photos for the actual filling of them, although I can't find the photos. Will have to give them a try with normal flour, but I suspect they'll look more cream coloured than white.

Dug out one of Sunflower's recipes, and she uses ordinary flour, and they don't look much different in colour. I'll post a summary of Fuchsia's recipe later.

http://sunflower-recipes.blogspot.com/2 ... -roux.html

[Sakkarin Profile]

Well I made 10 buns using cheapo flour, and they're great!

It really is as simple as making normal bread - 250g flour made 10.

With a generous pork, shiitake and onion filling, they worked out at £1.25 for 10. The one on the bottom is pre-steaming, to show how much they expand, although they started off even smaller, as that one had started to rise while the others were steaming. The only thing I regret is using more of my MSGish chilli bean paste, as that MSG taste still cut through a bit too much.

I'm going to freeze some, and see how they fare.

[Binky Profile]

You rotten devil.

Your buns make mine look pathetically puny.

[Stokey Sue Profile]

Those look good sakkarin

[Sakkarin Profile]

Your buns make mine look pathetically puny

The recipe said use 40g of dough to make ten or 20g of dough to make twenty, but I figured it would be too much work doing the weeny ones!

For the record, I had 300g of filling, and used a 12 cake tin to hold my pre-measured 30g portions in readiness for filling, which made it easier than I remember last time, faffing about in between shaping each bun. I pre-measured all the (40g) dough pieces too.

[Stokey Sue Profile]

I am a convert to the US methos of using a portioner (ice cream scoop, disher) to divide up filling etc.. It can be a bit of a faff if you do it the first time though

[Sakkarin Profile]

To an extent I usually do (vital for my identically sized 125g rolls!), the brainwave this time for me was to use the cake tray, which was perfectly sized for the 30g filling portions. I'll have to bear it in mind next time I make mince pies - fortunately I have two cake tins, so can use another for the actual pies.

[Sakkarin Profile]

UPDATE:
Just reconstituted one I froze earlier. I gave it 1 minute 10 seconds defrost in the microwave (as per when I defrost a normal bread roll), then 5 minutes in a steamer, and it was fine. I think you could probably get away with just 4 minutes steam, I'll try another one tomorrow.

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE:

No, it needs the 5 minutes, a 4 minute steam left it a bit cold in the centre.

[Sakkarin Profile]

For my latest batch of bread yesterday, I used the dough from one roll (125g) to make these two steamed buns. This is not two separate batches, I made enough dough for six 125g portions, baked five and steamed the remaining portion divided into two buns. 45p flour, so all the buns/rolls you can see cost 7.5p altogether - 4.5p's worth of flour, 3p's worth of yeast.

[Stokey Sue Profile]

Look great Sakkarin

[Sakkarin Profile]

Ta Sue. The rolls always turn out pretty well, but I've not managed to recreate those really crusty ones I made the other day, although I've had a couple of tries mucking around with trays in the oven