When it comes to Chinese pork buns, there is BM and there is AM.
BM as in “Before Microwaves,” before those boxy, miracle appliances became standard on our kitchen counters. And AM as is in “After Microwaves,” when we realized we couldn’t live without the darn things.
Those two periods in time had a profound effect on how I ate my delicious pork buns.
I’ve always enjoyed both the shiny, golden baked pork buns, as well as the fluffy, white steamed ones at many a dim sum restaurant.
My parents often bought some home, too, tied up in a pink square box.
BM, those were always the steamed buns that nestled in our fridge, never the baked ones. Lacking a toaster oven, my parents thought it a wasteful use of electricity to turn on the oven just to warm up a couple of small pork buns.
But the steamed ones were easy enough to handle by just placing them in a steamer on top of the stove. It took a little time to heat up the burner, to get the water boiling and the steam to penetrate the baos, but in those BM days, it seemed more than fast enough.
As a kid getting ready for school, I often awoke before my parents did. It would be my job in the morning to turn on the stove to get the kettle boiling for their coffee, and to take a couple of buns out of the fridge to place in the steamer for our breakfast. Bread-like, filled with sweet chunks of barbecued pork, and warm enough to make your fingers feel toasty on foggy San Francisco mornings, it was a perfect wake-me-up meal at that bright-eyed hour.
I can’t remember when we got our first microwave. But I do remember that AM, we sure seemed to have a lot more baked buns in the house. After all, warming them up in the newfangled microwave was a cinch, even if you had to sacrifice crispy tops in the process.
Nowadays, I still enjoy both steamed and baked varieties. My husband, though, swears his allegiance to the baked ones. I’m not sure if it’s because, as in my case, they became more ubiquitous in his household AM. All I know is that when I told him I was going to try making my very own baked char siu baos, he lit up like, well, metal sparking in the microwave.
Good pork buns can have that effect on people.
And these are no exception. The recipe is from my good friend, Andrea Nguyen whose new book, “Asian Dumplings” (Ten Speed Press) was just named a finalist for an IACP cookbook award. (Wooo, you go, girl!)
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