Low-Carb Char Siu Bao

First off, I havent' made any of this yet. There is currently no such thing as "Low-Carb Char Siu Bao". I hope to create it, though.

I dug up a bunch of char siu recipies, and blurred them all together to make what I hope works out to be something decent. Here is what I'm going to do for Char Siu mix:

Low Carb Char Siu

• 1-1/2 lb pork roast or some basic slab o' pig
• 1/2 tsp five spice
• 2 tbsp sherry
• 2 tbsp oyster sauce
• 1/2 tsp star anise
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 4pks Splenda

Cube the pork roast (or other basic cut of pork) into small cubes, oh, maybe 3/4" to 1" cube. Doesn't need to be exact. Place aside. Combine remaining ingredients in a 9" round casserole dish and mix well, Add in the cubed pork and stir about to coat the pork evenly. Place in a 300 ° F. oven for 2 hours (use a meat thermometer to be sure pork is fully cooked). Take out of the oven and set aside. Once sufficiently cooled, drain off excess liquid.

Note: The Low Carb Char Siu came out excellent. If you want a low carb char siu without the huge dose of sugar and red dye, this works great.

Char Siu Bao dough

• 1 box MiniCarb Parmesan Herb Pizza Crust Mix*
  

First off, let it be said, the reason I went with Parmesan Herb is because that was what was on the kitchen shelf when I went looking. Mix the low-carb pizza dough per manufacturer's instructions. After mixed, knead the dough for a few minutes, adding water as necessary to keep dough moist and pliable. Knead into a ball and place in a large bowl. Cover with a damp cloth and set aside for two hours to allow dough to rise. Note that the two hours here coincides nicely with the two hours cooking time for the char siu.

At the end of the two hours, the dough will have risen. Punch down the dough and knead it some more. Divide the dough into eight pieces.

With each of the eight pieces, roll out to a decent flat size, and add in a nice fat spoon of char siu. Pinch up the bottom of the dough and, well, google up a char siu bao recipe for better instructions. Anyhow, I steamed mine for 15 minutes.

The net result? Those things steamed up huge, but the split second I opened up the steamer, they collapsed into shriveled up prune things. I have no idea as of now how they taste. I'm not sure that "Char Siu meets Parmesan Herb" is a great idea, but once they cool, I'll have a taste.

Carb count? The pizza dough shows 12 servings per box, 5g total carb, 3g dietary fiber per serving. So, I've made 12 servings of pizza dough into 8 servings of char siu bao, so my math comes up with 7.5g total carb, 4.5g dietary fiber per serving. The char siu mix, well, that depends on how much char siu you decide to cram into each bao, right? I've listed the ingredients, so you can do the calculations if you wish. Me, I'm arbitrarily declaring the char siu filling to come in at 6g per bun, 0g dietary fiber (well, it is meat you know).

And the results
Taste? Let me walk over and try one. {eating} Well, I need to find a plain low-carb dough mix and try again. The parmesan herb is totally overpowering the char siu. The bun texture is very elastic, it's the bun that snaps back! I suspect they would have been much better baked instead of steamed.

* To be fair to the MiniCarb company, they never suggested using their pizza dough for char siu bao dough. They never even suggested using it for a char siu pizza. I'm sure it would have made an excellent pizza crust.

Overall, I'll give these 2 stars out of 5. Or as they might say in Chinese, bu hao bao.