Author: POP UP Dumpling Bar

Prawn & Dill Har Gow is another dumpling we know well through POP UP Dumpling Bar.

Despite the name, the dill isn’t actually part of the filling. We use it as a garnish, adding a little colour and freshness to the finished dumpling. Underneath, it’s still all about what makes a good prawn har gow: a translucent, slightly chewy wrapper surrounding a juicy filling with recognisable pieces of prawn.

Like our Pork & Prawn Siu Mai, I’m not putting our commercial production formula online.

Instead, this is my home version. The aim is to recreate the things I like about the dumplings we serve professionally using ingredients and techniques that make sense in a home kitchen.

The filling is deliberately simple. Some of the prawns are chopped more finely to bind everything together, while the rest are kept in larger pieces so there’s no mistaking what you’re eating.

The wrapper takes a little more work than siu mai, but once you’ve made a few, the process becomes surprisingly quick.

And if making har gow wrappers from scratch sounds like more commitment than you had planned, you can always come and eat ours at a POP UP Dumpling Bar pop-up instead.

Why Use Two Prawn Textures?

If all the prawns are minced very finely, the filling can become too uniform.

If they’re all left chunky, the filling doesn’t bind together as nicely.

Using some finely chopped prawn creates the sticky base that holds the filling together, while larger pieces provide the texture I actually want when biting into har gow.

Why Wheat Starch?

Despite its name, wheat starch isn’t the same thing as ordinary wheat flour.

It’s responsible for much of the characteristic translucent appearance and slightly chewy texture of har gow wrappers.

Tapioca starch adds elasticity, which makes the dough somewhat easier to work with and contributes to the finished texture.

I wouldn’t substitute ordinary plain flour and expect the same result.

The Water Needs to Be Boiling

This is one of the important parts of making har gow wrappers.

The starch needs very hot water to gelatinise properly.

I therefore boil the water and use it immediately rather than allowing it to sit in the kettle while preparing everything else.

Don’t Make All 30 Wrappers First

With ordinary dumpling dough, you can sometimes roll a stack of wrappers before filling them.

I wouldn’t do that here.

Har gow dough dries quickly and becomes increasingly prone to cracking.

My preferred workflow is:

Portion → roll one wrapper → fill → pleat → cover → repeat.

It’s slower initially, but you’ll waste fewer wrappers.

About the Dill

The dill in Prawn & Dill Har Gow is a garnish, not the defining flavour of the filling.

That’s intentional.

Prawn is delicate, and putting a substantial amount of dill directly into the filling would completely change the character of the dumpling.

A small amount over the finished har gow gives you the aroma and freshness without masking the prawn.

A Note About This Recipe

At POP UP Dumpling Bar, we make our Prawn & Dill Har Gow professionally in our contracted commercial kitchen.

This isn’t that commercial recipe.

This is my home interpretation, designed around the characteristics I want from the har gow we serve: plenty of prawn, noticeable pieces rather than a completely processed filling, a soft translucent wrapper and a little fresh dill over the finished dumplings.

It’s a way of sharing what we’ve learned from making dumplings professionally without giving away everything we do behind the scenes.

Too Much Effort?

I’ll admit that making har gow wrappers from scratch isn’t the quickest route to eating dumplings.

But that’s also part of what makes them satisfying to make.

If you get through the first few wrappers and decide you’ve gained enough appreciation for the process without needing to make another 25, there’s another option.

Come and find us at POP UP Dumpling Bar and we’ll make them for you.

Find our next pop-up →

Or if you’d rather have the dumplings come to you:

Catering with POP UP Dumpling Bar →

Pork and prawn siu mai are something we know pretty well.

Through POP UP Dumpling Bar, we steam and serve these every week at pop-ups, markets, weddings and events. After making more siu mai than I’d care to count, I wanted to put together a version that can actually be made at home.

The filling is mostly about texture. The pork needs to be mixed until it becomes sticky and springy, while I like to keep some of the prawn a little chunkier so you still get pieces of prawn rather than turning everything into a smooth filling.

Making siu mai isn’t particularly difficult. Making 30 of them just takes a little patience.

So here’s our Pork & Prawn Siu Mai recipe for when you feel like making them yourself.

And if wrapping 30 dumplings sounds like more effort than you had in mind, you can always come and find us at one of our POP UP Dumpling Bar locations and we’ll steam them for you.