Small, thin-skinned steamed buns of minced pork, pleated at the top and full of hot soup, served in the bamboo basket they cooked in.
What makes it xiaolongbao
A thin, part-risen or unrisen wrapper, pleated — often with a set number of folds.
Pork filling with jellied stock, which turns to soup.
Steamed in bamboo and eaten at once, with ginger and black vinegar.
Where it comes from
Xiǎolóng is the little steamer basket. They're usually traced to Nanxiang, a market town north-west of the old city, in the late nineteenth century, where a shopkeeper is said to have made his buns smaller and finer to beat the competition.
The soup is the trick: pork-skin stock, set to a jelly and chopped into the filling, melts as they steam. You bite a small hole, sip, then eat the rest with a sliver of ginger in black vinegar.
How it varies
Xièfěn xiǎolóng
With crab meat and roe in the filling, in hairy-crab season.
Nanxiang style
Often a slightly larger, less soupy bun than the city's showpiece versions.