Five of the best places in Shanghai for xiaolongbao soup dumplings, offering classic and creative fillings
- Thinly wrapped Shanghainese parcels of minced filling in a hot soup are world famous, but where do Shanghai natives like to eat theirs?
- From the traditional pork filling to others with crab roe, hairy crab, shrimp, or ham, we sample some of the top places to eat xiaolongbao in the city
Xiaolongbao are an engineering marvel. The steamed dumplings, best known in Shanghai –although other Chinese cities, and Taiwan, also specialise in them – are found most often with a filling of minced pork, although they can also be filled with other ingredients including crabmeat and crab roe.
What makes them stand out from other dumplings is the hot soup inside.
The secret to getting a liquid inside a dumpling’s thin, delicate wrapper, folded into even pleats with a distinctive topknot, isn’t injecting it, as some people think; rather, it comes from pork aspic, made with soup stock simmered with gelatin-rich ingredients such as pork skin and chicken bones, then chilled to make the gelatin set into a solid, then mixed with the dumpling’s filling.
When the dumpling is steamed, the heat melts the gelatin, turning the aspic into a hot liquid.
Everyone in Shanghai has their favourite spot for xiaolongbao, but for a more scientific guide, Shanghai-based chef-turned-food-writer Christopher St. Cavish went to more than 50 shops armed with a digital scale and a pair of calipers.
He measured the thickness of the wrappers, weighed the amount of solids and soup, then, in 2015, compiled the results into The Shanghai Soup Dumpling Index.