Let's talk zongzi (joong, Chinese Tamales)

[Jason Perlow]

Thats a really cool page, Sue-on.

[Ben Hong]

Sue-on, great looking joong (smack, drool, ). I have the greatest admiration for anyone younger than 80 years old keeping that tradition, and skill. In looking at your joong, I notice that your family's are longer than what my female relatives made. Ours were about half as long and, I'm judging, a bit thicker through. Each village and clan has slightly different wrapping styles. But, to be sure, they all taste fantastic.

BTW, we just came back from the Toronto region after about 9 days of visits and family "do's". In old Chinatown (Spadina, Dundas) I found and bought some joong made exactly the way Mother and Aunties used to make. Bought six of them for the late night hungries.. I have found that the ones made by the Vietnamese women to be skightly different than what I'm used to.

[Dejah]

Ben Hong said: In looking at your joong, I notice that your family's are longer than what my female relatives made.

The leaves I bought this year were all huge...which made wrapping easy, and prompted me to make big joong. Hubby says my packets, my dumplings, etc. get bigger as I get tired.

The length of our joong may have been dictated by the length of the pork and lapcheung.

I am boiling my last 30 sweet rice only joong. Should have +60 in my freezer when I am finished "giving"

There will be some designated for you, Ben, if you come hunting in this area.

Jason, Glad you liked the webpage. I hope to do some captions for the photos. The family has been after me to collate my recipes...so this may be a good start.

[hzrt8w]

I was boiling joong from 1 pm to 9:30 pm on a wet rainy Sat. Can you imagine the humidity in the house

Is there any reason to boil the joong for 8 and a half hours?

When I made mine the first time, I boiled them for 2 hours. I found that the texture of the glutinous rice, mung beans and peanuts were pretty much gone. I reduced the boiling time to 1 and a half hour then I could still taste the difference between glutinuous rice and mung bean.

I cannot imagine boiling joong for that long. Wouldn't they turn out to be paste-like? What are the reasons for having to boil them for over 8 hours?

Was it that you were boiling them in batches, each batch for 2 to 3 hours?

[Dejah]

I was boiling joong from 1 pm to 9:30 pm on a wet rainy Sat. Can you imagine the humidity in the house

Is there any reason to boil the joong for 8 and a half hours?

Was it that you were boiling them in batches, each batch for 2 to 3 hours?

I guess I didn't make that very clear...I was boiling batches of 24 for 2.5 hours each time. That time, we made 85 joong.

This weekend, we made 109. I was boiling from 2:30 until midnight, finishing the last batch this morning

I have found, from my mom's and my own experience, that 2.5 hours was just right. The rice was silky, the meat, nuts, mushrooms, shrimp were tender, but retained their texture.

I kept a kettle of water boiling, to add to the pot whenever it boiled down. The joong must be covered by water at all times, otherwise some of the rice will not cook. Everyone in the family had a joong facial

[Gastro888]

I suspect what you're talking about here is different and not zongzi.

At dimsum, it's noh mai gai.

They're shaped differently, without the points as in the photo.

They would be shaped sort of like squarish pillows, with rounded corners.

They also use only one kind of rice, where as zongzi should use regular rice and sticky rice.

A variation on that would be jen juh gai, which are smaller versions of noh mai gai.

I think it's all a matter of semantics. I would consider anything with a filling stuffed into glutinous rice, wrapped in leaves, bound and boiled a zongzi. Different regions (and different families) have different "traditional" shapes and fillings but it's really "chef's choice".

Conceptually, it's the same but they are two different dishes.

Noh Mai Gai is a dish for dim sum and not the same as Zong. Noh Mai Gai uses lotus leaves instead of the long bamboo leaves and it's not made for the spring festival. Also, Zong is most often times homemade and Noh Mai Gai is a restaurant dish available year round. Savory Cantonese Zong doesn't usually use soy sauce as an ingredient, but Noh Mai Gai (Sticky Rice Chicken) does.

My favorite Zong: sticky rice, mung beans (look dow), lap cheong, fatty pork butt, salted duck egg and dried scallops. I dislike chestnuts and peanuts in mine...the texture is too mealy for me.

[hzrt8w]

My favorite Zong: sticky rice, mung beans (look dow), lap cheong, fatty pork butt, salted duck egg and dried scallops. I dislike chestnuts and peanuts in mine...the texture is too mealy for me.

My kind of zong ingredients too. I see that this is your first post and you just joined today. Welcome aboard Gastro. I am a new comer myself and I love this forum already.

[Gary Soup]

Noh Mai Gai is a dish for dim sum and not the same as Zong.  Noh Mai Gai uses lotus leaves instead of the long bamboo leaves and it's not made for the spring festival.  Also, Zong is most often times homemade and Noh Mai Gai is a restaurant dish available year round.  Savory Cantonese Zong doesn't usually use soy sauce as an ingredient, but Noh Mai Gai (Sticky Rice Chicken) does. 

Historically, the wrapper was reed, not bamboo. And the famous Jiaxing zongzi (made close to the source of the legend) use a soy sauce bath for the rice, and fatty pork as the the sole stuffing.

It's a territorial issue, I guess. The Cantonese seem to have co-opted zongi (like they co-opted fried rice, a Yangzhou invention, and wonton, a Northern invention). In the diaspora, of course, their numbers are great, and they are very protective of their own adaptations.

What's "real" depends on where you sit.

[mrbigjas]

A joongzi webpage...a work in progress:

http://www.angelfire.com/trek/erbmuseum/soos/

Sue-on--

Excellent page. My god those look good.

[Dejah]

A joongzi webpage...a work in progress:

http://www.angelfire.com/trek/erbmuseum/soos/

Sue-on--

Excellent page. My god those look good.

Thanks!

I took one for each of my students this morning. They asked, "How come you didn't make sweet ones!" Ungrateful wretches!

[Ben Hong]

Gary Soup, we southerners co-opt nothing from the north, I resemble that remark Now everbody knows that all things culinary starts and ends in Kwangchow

[Dejah]

Gary Soup, we southerners co-opt nothing from the north, I resemble that remark   Now everbody knows that all things culinary starts and ends in Kwangchow    

Ditto

[yushoe]

yummy.... i can't wait to eat the zongzi my sister brought me from home when she came to visit me! my mom makes them the triangular pyramid way with fatty pork or red beans...

on another note, all this talk is making me wonder whether I should start learning how to cook/make those traditional chinese dishes that my generation only knows by taste. it would be sad if the art of zongzi-making was lost. on the other hand, my culinary skills are so rudimentary i think i should try something easier to start with, like hard-boiled eggs.

[lorea]

Is one particular shape supposed to taste better than another? The reason why I ask is because 2 weeks ago, I learned a new shape (the long ones that Jason/Dejah posted) from my boyfriend's grandma. I had always made the triangular ones that my family had always made, and it was really interesting learning a new shape! I think the long shape is better at distributing the meat/mushroom flavor throughout the entire jongzi - it's my new favorite.

I still love the triangular ones (I made both types with this batch) because you can cut off little chunks of the jongzi, place them on a plate, and microwave them until the outside dries out. This leaves the outside nice and chewy, while keeping the inside soft and moist. Am I the only one that does this?

[hzrt8w]

on another note, all this talk is making me wonder whether I should start learning how to cook/make those traditional chinese dishes that my generation only knows by taste.

By all means try it out and see if you like culinary arts. You never know... you may fall in love with it like I did many years ago. The only way to learn is to try it yourself and learn from your mistakes.

My wife, when she was just a teenager, used to try to look over her mom's shoulder in the kitchen. But her mom always pushed her away saying she's wouldn't know how to do it. (sad) Nowadays her mom kept saying my wife doesn't know how to cook, which brings her a lot of resentment. Nobody is born with cooking skills. How can you be in the knows without even given a chance to try?

[Dejah]

Is one particular shape supposed to taste better than another? 

I still love the triangular ones (I made both types with this batch) because you can cut off little chunks of the jongzi, place them on a plate, and microwave them until the outside dries out.  This leaves the outside nice and chewy, while keeping the inside soft and moist.  Am I the only one that does this? 

My non-Chinese hubby always says that the twisted shape my mom makes taste better I make them all with the same ingredients, so it may be psychological or downright flattery!

I microwave mine untied but still wrapped. Once in a while, I cook it too long and a thin outer layer gets chewy, the inside steaming good!

[Ben Hong]

From this old codger who is seeing an inexorable and tragic decline of traditional cooking in progress, all I can offer is this. If you have any inclination or curiosity to try your hand at cooking, please, please, please do it. No matter what you try, or spoil, it's only a few pennies worth of food ingredients. It's not only food at stake, it's our cherished and extremely long lived heritage. Lord only knows that any aspect of Chinese heritage generally involves a food component.

[spaghetttti]

Ooh, can I play too?

We don't get anywhere near the delicious kinds of dumplings that you all have described.

Here in Indonesia ours literally pale in comparison. We call them bacang, and the halal ones are usually filled with beef or chicken, sweet soy sauce and scallions. Regular rice rather than glutinous rice is used.

My husband's family is from the Moluccan Islands and there the bacang is made with a combination of regular and glutinous rice and stuffed with fish and aromatic spices, then wrapped in wide pandan leaves.

Yetty

Edited July 12, 2004 by spaghetttti (log)

[Gary Soup]

Ooh, can I play too?

You can't win if you don't play.

But gosh, is that bottom picture provocative!

[lorea]

Yes indeed....those do look very good! One of these days, I'm going to go beyond my comfortable favorites (glutinous rice, fatty pork, and shiitake mushrooms....or using Yo Fan as a filling) and try something new.

I have another question....how long does everybody boil theirs for? And do you like it so the rice is very very soft, or like it when the rice still has some chew?

[hzrt8w]

We call them bacang, and the halal ones are usually filled with beef or chicken, sweet soy sauce and scallions. Regular rice rather than glutinous rice is used.

Question: if only regular rice is used and no glutinous rice, wouldn't the ZongZi break apart easily when taking off the bamboo leaves? How do they hold together?

I boil my ZongZi for about 2 hours and no longer. It still retains a little texture where I can tell the difference between glutinous rice and mung bean and peanut.

[Dejah]

Pandan leaves, are these available in some form in N.A.?

Haven't made zongzi with just regular rice for a long time. I used to boil these for 3 hours. Even then, they don't have that silky texture that glutinous rice developes. The rice stuck together fine.

I just boil everything 2.5 hours. Once, my staff forgot to watch the clock and boiled the zongzi for 4 hours. The rice was still intact but lost some of that "chewiness" . The peanuts weren't mushy tho'.

Spaghettti, is the meat in whole pieces or ground? Do you cook the filling before putting it in the zongzi?

[spaghetttti]

Spaghettti, is the meat in whole pieces or ground? Do you cook the filling before putting it in the zongzi?

Hi Dejah,

The filling is usually ground meat. Actually, the photos are of purchased bacang/zongzi. There's a vendor very close to my office, and I'd wanted to try his bacang for the longest time, but never got around to stop and get some. This morning I bought those two and they were quite tasty.

But this thread, and your posts especially, have prompted me to invite my mom to come over next Saturday for a fun-filled day devoted to making and boiling up some zongzi. When I spoke to her on the phone today, she said that my dad likes the rice parboiled with lightly salted santan (coconut milk). And she prefers hers without soy sauce. My husband likes the spicy fish filled ones made with glutinous rice, so we'll try to make several kinds to accommodate the various preferences. I'd also like to use stewed meat chunks rather than ground. I'm really looking forward to this weekend! Although I don't think ours will be as beautifully wrapped and tied as your mother's and yours.

Thank you for the inspiration.

Yetty

[Shiewie]

Think the word bacang may have orginated from bak chang, which is Hokkien for meat zongzi. And the rice in Hokkien joongs are usually fried in a a bit soy sauce first before it is wrapped with the meat and all.

Spaghetttti - santan for zongzi has got me thinking about a lemang-like zongzi with santan and beef-serunding filling .

[Dejah]

Spaghettti,

Can you take pictures when you make the jongzi with your mom?

I have a friend from Indonesia. She would love to see your work with your mom. I made some jongzi for her, with duck, mushrooms, shrimp, peanuts, salted egg yolk and onions.Called me last night to say she only had one left...

For your dad's, after parboiling, how long would you boil the jongzi? Actually, I like the shape of the ones you showed. They could be done much quicker!

With the no mai gai ( sticky rice in lotus leaves), I cook the rice completely, cook the filling, then wrap it all together. These only require steaming for 20 minutes to "set" everything.