Momofuku Pork Buns

Assembling the ingredients for the buns is what takes the longest.  But, with the pork belly roasted, the buns made and steamed and the cucumber pickled, all you need is some store-bought hoisin sauce and sriracha sauce. 

Niall's vegetarian version (the lower bun in the photo above) had all the ingredients except the pork belly.  Instead, he had halloumi cheese grilled with maple syrup, which gave the cheese a nice brown and crispy shell.

Momofuku Steamed Buns

I've hardly had steamed buns, so it was really fun to make these because I wasn't sure how they were supposed to turn out!  Even when they had finished steaming I wasn't sure they were done.

The recipe made a dough that was very easy (not sticky) work with.  Dividing the dough into 50 different pieces was not hard because the dough was so easy to handle.  I used butter instead of rendered pork fat so Niall could eat as many as he liked.

And rolling out the buns wasn't too hard either.

I tried steaming them in a steamer and on the stove.  The stove steamer worked much better!  We ended up steaming, cooling and freezing most of the buns.