Mìlà Puts a Hong Kong Classic Inside a Soup Dumpling for a Mind-Blowing Mashup
The company’s xiao long bao are getting a lusciously creamy chicken and corn filling.
Photo courtesy of MìLà
When it comes to comfort foods, dumplings are at the top of the list. Not only are there seemingly endless variations to choose from, but the little bundles are incredibly versatile — depending on the type, you can steam, boil or fry them. They can be a satisfying meal all on their own or served as an appetizer as part of a larger spread.
Served piping hot and filled with soup, Shanghainese xiao long bao are especially cozy and soothing on a chilly day. The thin dough wrapper traditionally holds a ground pork soup filling and while that usually hits the spot, there’s a new flavor taking XLB’s comfort-food vibes to the next level.
Frozen soup dumpling specialist MìLà recently launched a limited-edition flavor that combines its signature product with another classic Chinese dish: corn and chicken soup. The soup, a staple in Cantonese cuisine, is a variation on egg drop soup. It’s hearty and warming with a light sweetness from the kernels.
Like many recipes, every family’s take on the iconic dish is different — Woks of Life uses fresh corn, Made With Lau’s recipe calls for unsweetened canned corn, my mom was partial to sweet cream-style corn. At MìLà, the inspiration came from a team member who enjoyed the beloved dish while growing up in Hong Kong, but making a xiao long bao reminiscent of corn and chicken soup proved to be a challenge.
“We iterated on the product many times since the classic format of a meatball and soup enrobed in dough wasn’t translating the soup concept how we originally imagined it,” says Jennifer Liao who co-founded MìLà with husband Caleb Wang.
So they reimagined the filling as a creamy corn soup with bits of chicken rather than the usual meatball. The resulting dumplings are super juicy and rich. For those of us who grew up with corn and chicken soup, they’re also packed with nostalgia.
Patty Lee
MìLà’s bite-sized dumplings arrive frozen and need to be cooked via steaming. Each package comes with helpful instructions that I successfully followed using a wooden steamer basket. The recommended 10 minutes resulted in plump, tender-skinned soup dumplings. Steamer sheets are included in each bag, yet another thoughtful touch from a company that’s committed to making restaurant-quality dumplings while staying true to its roots.
“For this particular flavor combination, a team member deeply important to our company challenged us to capture the nostalgic magic of her fondest dish she ate growing up in Hong Kong,” says Liao. “After completely overhauling the way we process soup dumplings, we were able to do what we set out to do: put Hong Kong creamy corn soup into a soup dumpling and authentically capture that fond memory.”
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