Cha Siu Bao

When I was a teenager I attempted making cha siu bao from scratch. It was a full day task and after all that effort they came out terrible. Full of long scallion pieces (which should have been a warning sign in the recipe to me). Baba found the best frozen variety and I never tried again. But it's hard to find a good one here so I decided to try this again, but this time starting with store bought cha siu. Neither of these recipes is perfect, but it's a starting point to try to figure out what to tweak to get it better for next time.

Red House Spice Recipe - ** - 14 buns
27 Jan 2026 - I started with this one because the dough was quick to make. However, the filling was way too goopy. After filling 4 buns, I chopped up a lot more pork and tossed it in. The recipe asked for 130g of cha siu, but it needed about 200 g for the amount of sauce. I ran out of grapeseed oil part way, so subbed in less than 1 T olive oil. I used regular flour instead of cake flour (perhaps the dough would have been better with cake flour). But in the end, the bread was not sweet like I think a cha siu bao should be, so I would not use this dough recipe again. The folds also all disappeared into each other while sitting to rise. The filling tasted too salty, but then when compared to the next recipe, XBD thought this filling was better. My judgement is reserved for when I do a side by side taste test (I put some of each batch in the freezer to compare later). However, I do like that the shallot (which I used instead of onion) was used just to flavor the sauce, but was not kept in.

Woks of Life Recipe - *** - 10 large buns
28 Jan 2026 - This dough was a pleasure to work with, came out much fluffier and cracked closer to a restaurant style one. It was noticeably sweeter than the first recipe (which makes sense since it has 5 T of sugar instead of just 2). The buns came out huge! I would divide into 12-14 next time instead of just 10, just to have a smaller size. I also couldn't fit in all the filling. The filling still came out too salty. Try reducing the salty items (soy, oyster and/or chicken stock?).

Next attempt

- woks of life dough
- no onion/shallot in filling (only use to flavor the sauce)
- less saltiness
- less sauce:pork ratio
- improve flavor - figure out what is missing or too much