Nanxiang, Shanghai
Xiaolongbao
Shanghai soup dumplings — a pleated parcel of pork and aspic that liquefies into a teaspoon of broth when steamed.
The broth is jellied at the table.
There is no soup ladled into a xiaolongbao. The pork filling carries a cube of solidified pork-skin aspic; when the dumpling steams for eight minutes, the aspic melts and becomes the soup. This is the trick that gives the dish its name — *xiaolong* (small steaming basket) *bao* (bun) — and the entire technique exists to make the gelatin sit still long enough for the pleating to happen.
4 · Plate
Nanxiang, Shanghai
Xiaolongbao
Shanghai soup dumplings — a pleated parcel of pork and aspic that liquefies into a teaspoon of broth when steamed.
The most engineered dumpling in the Chinese repertoire. Xiaolongbao were invented in Nanxiang, a town on the western edge of Shanghai, in the mid-19th century — credited to a cook named Huang Mingxian, who took the existing big-bun mantou tradition and shrank it down to a teaspoon of meat, a teaspoon of soup, and a wrapper thin enough to see the filling through.
Eating one is a choreographed sequence. Lift with chopsticks at the topknot. Drop into a small ceramic spoon. Bite a small hole at the side and let the soup flow into the spoon. Drink the soup. Eat the dumpling. A novice will spill the soup onto the table or burn the roof of their mouth; both are rites of passage.
Eighteen pleats, by tradition.
Din Tai Fung built its global reputation partly on the legend that every xiaolongbao has exactly eighteen folds. The number is real for their kitchen; whether it's the platonic target or just a marketing gospel is a different argument. A pleat that's too thick is dumpling; a pleat that's too thin tears. Eighteen is what experienced hands settle into.