Making bak zang has been my family tradition for many many years. My mother insisted my two sisters and I, to learn this skill since we were in primary school! We started making small tiny gee zangs (碱水粽) when we were young and progressed to making bak zangs (bui ba and cui ba). Since then, we have not stopped making them as family and friends loves them. The taste is made to suit our family. We omitted five-spice powder as my late Ah ma didn’t like it. I am penning this recipe so as to ensure that this will be pass down to whoever is interested in this as my mother is getting on her years. To make bak zangs, the preparations starts 2-3 days before, and every year, we make about 10kg of rice and more than 250 bak zangs!
These ingredients are flexible and you can change to cater to your taste. I don’t have the exact measurements of the ingredients and sauces as my mother will add based on her gut feel. Please trial and error and adjust accordingly to your taste. This recipe is more for documenting down the steps involved.
Preparation of bak zang leaves n strings:
Soak dry bak zang leaves overnight. Wash and rinsed each piece of leaves using a cloth to remove dirt. Change to fresh pail of water if it’s very dirty. Set aside when leaves are all cleaned by soaking in fresh pail of clean water. As for strings, we prefer to use the traditional strings for bak zang, rather than raffia strings as the colorings from the strings will dissolved during cooking which is unhealthy.
Preparation of ingredients:
- Blanched pork belly (三层肉) to remove blood and allow it to cooled. Sliced into smaller pieces (about a inch thick). Marinate with some dark soya sauce overnight.
- Prepare pork lard oil the night before.
- Mushrooms to soak the night before and reserve the soaking water. Marinate mushrooms with 1-2 tbsps of dark soya sauce about an hour before stir frying.
- Chestnuts/gao luk (wash and soak with hot water). Boil chestnuts. Deshell when cooled the night before.
- Dry oysters (rinsed and soak)
- Dry shrimps/haebi (rinsed and soak with warm water. Reserve soaking water)
- Lots of garlic, peeled and lightly smashed
- Few bunches of pandan leaves
- Heat wok with 2 tbsps of pork lard oil. Add 8-10 cloves of smashed garlic and sauté till fragrant. Add 2 tbsps of dark soya sauce (大华牌) and let it caramelized. Add marinated pork belly and stir fry. Add dashes of white pepper, salt and oyster sauce. Add in some water from soaking shrimps and mushrooms and simmer pork belly for about 5 mins. Off heat and set aside.
- Heat wok with 2 tbsps of pork lard oil. Add some cloves of smashed garlic and sauté till fragrant. Add about a tbsp of dark soya sauce to caramelize. Add marinated mushrooms. Add a dash of pepper and salt and stir fry for few mins till mushrooms are coated with sauce. Off heat and set aside.
- ** Repeat the same for other ingredients; chestnuts, dry oysters and stumps.
- Wash and rinse glutinous rice well and set aside. Heat wok with some pork lard oil and add cloves of smashed garlic. Add 2 tbsps of dark soya sauce and let it caramelized. Add rinsed glutinous rice and stir fry to mix well for two mins. Add some salt, pepper and 1-2 tbsps more dark soya sauce (not too much, it’s more for adding color to rice). Off heat after rice is well mixed.
- Start to wrap when all ingredients are ready. Put rice at bottom of leaves. Then some of each ingredients. Top with rice again and wrap. Try not to stuff too much rice as rice will expand once it’s cooked. And my advise is not to wrap dumplings too tight since rice will expand and it will not maintain the shape you wrapped when it’s too tight. It will also risk of dumplings bursting during cooking when it’s too tight.
- In the meantime, prepare a big pot of water to cook the dumplings. We used the traditional way which is using charcoal. You can also cook the dumplings using stove.
- Add 2-3 bunches of washed pandan leaves to big pot of water and bring it to a boil. Add about 1-2 tbsps of salt. Tie individual bunches of dumplings together and lower to hot boiling water. Boil dumplings in water for about 2 hours till it’s cooked. Once cooked, remove dumplings and hang on a hook and let it drip dry.
I made a simple video of me
https://www.facebook.com/quek.bin.1/videos/10209480118535548/
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