Why did this recipe call for me to cook half the pork?

December 13, 2020 6:53 PM

I made bao for dinner tonight, using this recipe from Director Domee Shi. It's her family's recipe that she based the Pixar short on. I have a question about it.

The recipe calls for a half pound of ground pork. It then says to cook half the pork and mix it with the raw pork, along with the other ingredients to make the filling.

My question is, why? Why would I mix cooked pork with raw pork? Why not cook all the pork? Why not cook none of the pork and let it cook in the steamer?

I suppose the answer is "because that's how it's made" but I'm still curious why it would do that.

The possible answers I can think of are texture, maybe a slight bit of flavor from the browning of the pork, or to render some fat out of it. I suspect it's one of those but I'm curious if there would be other reasons.

Can you do better than my wild ass guessing? Do you know bao? I don't. This was my first time making it and it was not a staple of my Irish/Italian suburban upbringing.

We don't need to discuss any food safety issues with mixing cooked pork in with raw. The cooked pork was cooled before it was added and it was all steamed in a bamboo steamer for fifteen minutes. The internal temperature when done was about 180 degrees. I'm not worried about getting any cooties. I trust the author of the recipe who has probably been eating these for decades without getting cooties.

Also, the bao were really good. You should make some.

posted by bondcliff to Food & Drink (6 answers total)

I have only ever made dumplings with raw filling, per a Serious Eats recipe, and they were definitely cooked to a safe internal temperature so I’m not worried about that. I think your idea that there is a bit of flavor enhancement from a Maillard reaction might be on the nose, but the recipe I’ve used is so highly seasoned that I don’t know that it would make that much of a difference.

I’m as curious as you to know whether there’s another reason for this!
posted by padraigin at 7:11 PM on December 13, 2020 [3 favorites]

This is just as much wild ass guessing, as I've never come across this technique (unless it's charsiu bao), but could it be to prevent an overly juicy interior causing a leaky or soggy-bottomed bao?
posted by hellopanda at 7:22 PM on December 13, 2020 [6 favorites]

I'd second the assumption that it's to get some Maillard stuff. The chili recipe I use calls for searing half the meat that goes into the chili for that exact reason. You want some Maillard flavor, but you don't want the texture to be all browned meat, so you do half and the rest cooks with the chili while stewing and gets really tender when it's done. My guess is that your recipe is trying to do something similar with providing some of that flavor but not overwhelming the texture.
posted by LionIndex at 7:35 PM on December 13, 2020 [3 favorites]

Best answer: The Binging with Babish page where he makes this recipe talks about it being "to amp up the pork-y flavor of the filling" and notes that it's cooked to "golden brown", so +n on it being for Maillard flavor. I've seen a fair number of Serious Eats recipes (chili, etc) which call for the same thing, where you want the delicious flavor of the browned meat, but browning it all leads to an unpleasant texture when it's cooked the second time.

Browning the meat is one of the critical steps to any well-made stew or braise, which is what chili is. As we've seen before in our Stew Science series, browning is a double-edged sword. It builds necessary rich and roasty flavors via the complex Maillard reaction. But it also dehydrates the meat, making it dry and tough. The solution is to only brown a portion of the meat, which gets us those flavors while leaving plenty of the remaining meat tender.

posted by CrystalDave at 9:19 PM on December 13, 2020 [12 favorites]

Ha, Serious Eats is in fact the chili recipe I use.
posted by LionIndex at 8:45 AM on December 14, 2020

I am wild ass guessing here. I was listening to a podcast discussing Chinese cuisine and they went into detail how *texture* is so very important. The pleasure of the gristly chew of chicken feet was discussed. How the ancient culture had a really broad based view on the characteristics of the food. I think the two types of textures: browned pieces of pork and soft-steamed pieces of pork showcase this attribute. Also, as a westerner, porkiness.
posted by zerobyproxy at 8:58 AM on December 15, 2020