Rice dumpling or Bak Chang

Rice dumpling, zongzi or Bak Chang as we called it is a combination of cooked glutinous rice stuffed with different filling and wrapped in bamboo leaves. There are many kinds of rice dumpling. The one I like most is made of long-grain rice stuffed with ground beef seasoned with sweet soy sauce. Once, I was in Toronto during the rice dumpling season and the Chinese grocery stores there sold many unique taste of rice dumpling like kimchi, satay and chocolate rice dumplings.

For those who are not familiar with rice dumpling. Here is a brief history of rice dumpling, taken from Wikipedia,

Zongzi (or zong) (Chinese: 粽子) is a traditional Chinese food, made of glutinous rice stuffed with different fillings and wrapped in bamboo or reed leaves. They are cooked by steaming or boiling. They are known in Japanese as chimaki. Laotians, Thais, and Cambodians (known as Nom Asom) also have similar traditional dishes. In the Western world, they are also known as rice dumplings (an inaccurate translation) or Chinese tamales[citation needed]. In Indonesia and Malaysia, they are known as bakcang, bacang, or zang (Chinese: 肉粽; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: bah-chàng), a loanword from Hakka, a Chinese dialect commonly used among Indonesian-Chinese, rather than Mandarin. Along the same lines, zongzi are more popularly known as machang among Chinese Filipinos.

Most of the time when I posted a recipe, I would say it is easy and does not take long to make, but not this one. Honestly, I do not know how to wrap the rice dumpling. Luckily, my husband has been trained since he was young to wrap them. So after getting his consent to help me wrap the rice dumpling, I browsed the net for the best recipe and prepared the ingredients.



Most rice dumpling's recipe has similar basic ingredients. For the filling, you need to have glutinous rice, some kind of meat and spices. I used sweet Italian sausages, dried shrimps and Chinese sausages for my filling. And of course, you need to have the bamboo leaves. They are available in any Chinese groceries.

There are many recipes of rice dumpling online; Bak Chang recipe, Making rice dumpling and Zong zi. I used Elkaje's recipe to make these rice dumplings (this recipe is in Indonesian).



Amanda did help and she also learned a song about rice dumpling from YouTube called Sio Bak Chang. I am planning to video her singing Sio Bak Chang soon.



Well, my rice dumplings are not as authentic as others but they were delicious and we were glad to be able to make them,