My Quest for Vegan Soup Dumplings
Vegan soup dumplings are like the holy grail, or the fountain of youth: Elusive, perhaps unattainable. They certainly aren’t common.
I dreamed about meatless soup dumplings for years. I even fantasized about opening a food truck dedicated to the delicacy. I’d perfect a version of the classic xiaolongbao, of course, but I also imagined little sacs of salty miso soup, filled with scallion, tofu, and seaweed, and pockets of sweet, luxurious onion soup. Last winter I finally purchased a little bamboo steamer at a kitchen supply store in Chinatown. I brought it home and installed it in the cabinet next to the bowls, where it sat untouched for months, a monument to my dormant culinary ambitions.
This summer I decided to actually follow through: First, to finally recreate the gush of salty, fatty broth when you bite into a soup dumpling, and the exquisite burst of black vinegar and ginger on the palate; and second, to test my reckless and thoroughly unfounded theory that agar agar, like a magic incantation, will transform most any soup into a dumpling filling.
The soupiness of the final product is the integral feature. A good vegan dumpling simply isn’t hard to find if you live in a major metropolis like New York City. Even if you don’t, you can probably…
