The Inventive Shanghai Soup Dumpling

My blog is usually about finding healthy food, but given that I downloaded my pictures from the trip to China and Taiwan, I want to take a few posts to display some of the very traditional and very delicious food we ate on the trip.  First stop: Nanxiang Steamed Buns Restaurant in Shanghai, China.

One of my favorites is the Shanghai soup dumplings.  This restaurant is in the Yu Gardens and is famous for Xiaolongbao (小笼包), or referred to as Shanghai soup dumplings.  This restaurant is famous with locals and tourists.  The lines were winding around the restaurant, inside and out, no exaggeration.

Shanghai soup dumplings have a very thin wrapper skin with filling and broth inside.  It's a pretty ingenious invention.  Usual fillings are pork, crab/pork, vegetable, and other seafood combinations.  The little orange pepper indicated that my shark fin/crab/pork dumpling was on the right of it.  The shark fin soup dumpling is usually the most expensive and to be savored.

I also should add, we went all out for this meal, so that basket below was a personal basket.  All mine!

When you eat the Shanghai soup dumpling, you usually use a soup spoon, put the dumpling on the spoon, add the vinegar/ginger condiment, and then bite a hole at the top of the dumpling to let the steam out.  The broth inside can be really hot.  After you blow and it cools, eat while sucking.  A trick that takes a few times to get used to.

Here you find a MASSIVE soup dumping.  Note the little caution hot! sticker. haha.  And that broth is H-O-T.  I burned my tongue even after I waited almost 10 minutes to consume.  We had so much food (more to come in my next post), so although it was so well made, I don't think I really enjoyed it as I could have.  Need a repeat!