The Chinese turnip cake is a popular dim sum item and a festive dish for Chinese holidays, including Chinese New Year. It is a savory rice cake loaded with cured meat, daikon radish, mushrooms, and dried shrimp. It’s steamed, and then pan fried to create a tender texture with a crispy crust. The first time I tried turnip cake at a dim sum restaurant, I wasn’t very impressed. You see, restaurants tend to skimp on ingredients. That rice cake contained barely any meat. It just tasted like a silky-textured salty bread, which was kind of boring. I fell in love with this dim sum dish once I tried the homemade version. Oh my, it was the opposite of the restaurant version and tasted SO GOOD! I’ve updated the recipe with a new formula since I published it previously. I used a new approach to reduce rice flour and increase the liquid, so it yields an extra tender turnip cake just like your favorite dim sum spot.
Ingredients
Key ingredients
These are the most important parts of the recipe. You might need to go to an Asian market to get them or purchase them online. Although it’s possible to make this dish skipping one or two of these dry goods, I highly recommend you use all of them to create the best turnip cake.
How to cut Chinese sausage
It’s important to dice all the filling ingredients to small, even pieces to yield the best mouthfeel. To cut the Chinese sausage, I prefer to:
Prep work
Before cooking, your table should have:
Cooking process
Cook the filling
Brown the Chinese sausageSaute the dried shrimpQuickly cook the green onions
NOTE: I didn’t use any oil in this step, because Chinese sausage will render a lot of oil as it cooks. I used it to cook the rest of the ingredients, so I can use less oil in the dish.
Cook the daikon radish
Boil the radish in a pan with waterDrain thoroughly, then use the daikon water later in the cooking
NOTE:
Assemble & steam
NOTE:
How to slice the steamed turnip cake
This recipe creates such an amazingly tender result that it can be tricky to slice the turnip cake without crushing it. I found that the best practice is to slice it with a sawing motion, so the cut edges will be smooth and clean (thus yielding an evenly browned result when pan frying). You can see the slice on the far left is very coarse, and it was cut by pushing the knife directly downward. The rest of the pieces were cut with a sawing motion, which created smooth edges. If you want further perfection, prepare a glass of hot water on the side. Dip your knife between each slice to rinse off the starch from the blade.
Rehat & serve
Although you can eat the turnip cakes right after cooking, I highly recommend using a bit of oil to pan fry them to create that irresistible crispy surface. This recipe yields a very flavorful result that does not require any dipping sauce. However you can serve the cakes with hot sauce or soy sauce to give them a final boost.
Storage
I recommend you make a full batch, because it takes about the same amount of work to cook as a half batch. Freeze some of the steamed rice cakes so you will have some awesome dim sum to snack on later!
Other classic dim sum recipes
Char Siu Bao (Steamed BBQ Pork Buns)Char Siu (Chinese BBQ Pork)How to Make Chinese Egg RollsCantonese Wonton Noodle SoupChinese Steamed Custard Buns (nai wong bao)
If you give this recipe a try, let us know! Leave a comment, rate it (once you’ve tried it), and take a picture and tag it @omnivorescookbook on Instagram! I’d love to see what you come up with. Lilja Walter is a part of the Omnivore’s Cookbook team and worked closely with Maggie to develop and test this recipe.
