Dim Sum Garden’s make-at-home soup dumplings come close to restaurant quality

My hunger is highly suggestible. So it’s no surprise that, when I stopped at a traffic light on Market Street I looked at the Dim Sum Garden delivery van beside me detailed with a picture of a giant dumpling gushing broth into a spoon, I knew immediately exactly what I was having for my next lunch.

The response might not be as powerful for just any food. I’ve long been obsessed with xiao long bao, the Shanghainese sleight of culinary wonder also known as the soup dumpling. And the pandemic has put a damper on that habit. These delicate dumpling packages bulging with scalding hot broth inside their twisted top skins are traditionally a dine-in experience. Rare has been the order of cooked xiao long bao over the past year that survived the bumpy cross-town commute back from Chinatown with out a few burst bao sacrificed to the pothole gods.

But Dim Sum Garden has the ultimate solution. Let customers cook them at home.

The Shanghai dumpling house owned by Sally Song and her mother, Shizhou Da, has long been one of Chinatown’s busiest destinations for soup dumpling satisfaction. During a year of full of business challenges, they’ve embraced the increased takeout demand from the pandemic by creating their own efficient delivery service to avoid the high cost of third-party delivery . They’ve also creatively tackled the culinary challenge of selling products that don’t always travel well.

There are now 20 different dumplings available frozen by Dim Sum Garden, from their sticky rice shao mai to their roast pork buns and spicy shrimp dumplings. And while I see the convenient virtues of a bag of any of these in my freezer, most of those varieties traveled well enough pre-cooked by the restaurant in a traditional takeout order. The soup dumplings, however, were a revelation of improvement cooked at home.

Too often, takeout soup dumplings show up saggy, depleted, and lukewarm. But when these frozen dumplings emerged from my steamer basket after 14 minutes (according to the restaurant’s handy online instructions), they landed on our table still buoyant and thrillingly plump. The hot broth inside — liquefied from a jellied stock inside the meat stuffing that actually freezes well — gushed into a spoon when I nibbled the dumpling open with an aromatic steam that tickled my nose in a way I hadn’t experienced since the last time I ate inside a Chinatown dining room, well over a year ago. With a dip in DSG’s sweet and tangy dumpling sauce (which I always amp with extra black vinegar and a splash of chili oil), these xiao long bao cooked at home were certainly the next best thing.

— Craig LaBan

Frozen soup dumplings, $25 for 20, Dim Sum Garden, 1020 Race St., dimsumgardenphilly.com