Siopao

Ever tried eating fluffy white bread stuffed with various meat?
You should try siopao. It is a great snack you could easily munch on, on the go. It is kind of like an Asian hamburger. You may also find types of siopaos in China and Thailand where they are given a different name known as baozi and salapao. Like puto, that I have mentioned in my previous blog, there are multiple siopaos that there are made in different ways -- some stuffed with tons of overloading meat, while others, my favorite, are the siopaos that hardly consist of any meat at all. Although there may be a numerous amount of fillings for this certain snack, the two most common are pork asado (chopped pork sprinkled with soy sauce, sprinkled with sugar and salt) and bola-bola (ground pork with a quail egg). Sometimes, to decipher between the different types of filings they would even color code them and put colored dots on the top to know which flavor was which. They are usually found in Asian restaurants described to contain hot fillings wrapped in dough, that are steamed in huge steamer that range from bamboo and steal. The bread itself is extremely exquisite. The soft tasty bread just keeps you wanting more as the taste simply dwells in your mouth. What's even greater than I could possibly imagine, that I recently discovered, is the fact that you could actually find it sold in Mayflower, this Chinese restaurant I’ve been dining in for quite some time now, during birthday dinners of relatives. They make it where the breads are in thee sides of the platter while the meat lingers in the center of the platter. Basically it's one of those build your own type of siopaos. Mayflower is definitely a restaurant you would want to try out. It’s basically a casual Chinese restaurant that serves great food located at spring st. in Chinatown. Another great place you might want to grab some siopao is a little Filipino-Chinese restaurant at the corner or beverly and union, Lil Ongpin, who also serve delicious siopao with this insane brown sweet sauce that gives the siopao a little umph.

Another insane idea I came across a couple years ago, is that for those who are not an expert at cooking siopao or are too lazy to keep going to restaurants to buy siopao, they have made it easier for us to just heat up siopao in our own house. It's so quick and easy to just buy at stores in packs and have a whole weeks supply of them to just throw in the microwave and just eat it on the go, whether your off to work/school or stuck at home and craving for a snack, it would be easy to just heat it up at home. Siopao is definitely a must to taste. So try it!