Pork & Cabbage Dim Sims (Aussie Style)

The Australian-Chinese fish-and-chip-shop dim sim.

Why you should cook this

Dim sims are the Australian-Chinese fish-and-chip-shop classic that nobody outside Australia has heard of and that everyone inside Australia learned to eat by the steamer-bag-of-six on a Saturday afternoon at the back of a footy club bar. Pork and cabbage, square wonton wrapper, steamed first then crisped on the bottom. The home version takes a Sunday afternoon and produces forty of them, which freeze brilliantly and reheat in 90 seconds.

The trick that home cooks miss is salting the cabbage. Twenty minutes, a tablespoon of salt, then squeeze the water out hard with a clean tea towel. Without that step the filling is wet and the dim sims fall apart in the steamer. Use a pork mince with proper fat (not the lean pink stuff), a Shaoxing rice wine you actually have to walk to a Chinese grocer for, and the square yellow wonton wrappers, not the round ones. Soy sauce, black vinegar, chilli oil for dipping. Open a cold Tsingtao.

What to drink with it

Cold tsingtao, a soy-and-rice-vinegar dipping sauce, our Coconut Espresso Martini at the end.

Notes from the kitchen

Salt the cabbage first. Wilts and releases water. Without this step the dim sims fall apart. Wonton wrappers, square ones. Yellow square ones, not round.

The recipe

Pork & Cabbage Dim Sims (Aussie Style)

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Prep Time 50 minutes mins

Cook Time 15 minutes mins

Total Time 1 hour hr 5 minutes mins

Servings: 6 serves

Course: Appetizer, Main Course

Cuisine: Australian, Chinese

Ingredients Method

Ingredients

  

1x2x3x?

• 500 g pork mince (20% fat)
• 300 g wombok cabbage, finely shredded
• 1 tbsp salt (for the cabbage)
• 3 spring onions, finely sliced
• 3 cm fresh ginger, grated
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 tbsp light soy sauce
• 1 tbsp Shaoxing rice wine
• 1 tbsp toasted sesame oil
• 1 tsp white pepper
• 1 tbsp cornflour
• 1 x 250g packet square wonton wrappers

Method

 

1. Toss shredded cabbage with salt. Leave 20 minutes. Squeeze out as much liquid as possible.
2. Combine pork, drained cabbage, spring onions, ginger, garlic, soy, Shaoxing, sesame oil, white pepper and cornflour. Mix one direction for 2 minutes.
3. Place 1.5 tbsp filling in the centre of a wonton wrapper. Bring the four corners up to meet at the top, pinch to seal, leaving the corners pinched up like a flower.
4. Repeat. Place on a tray dusted with cornflour.
5. Bring water to the boil under a steamer. Lay dim sims on a piece of baking paper inside the steamer (don't let them touch each other). Steam 12 minutes.
6. Optional: heat 2 tbsp oil in a non-stick pan, place dim sims in flat-side-down, fry 90 seconds until bottoms are golden.
7. Serve with soy sauce, black vinegar, chilli oil.

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