A Tradition Continued

The blog has been around for some time now, and I find that I look forward to each year’s Dragon Boat Festival as a sort of landmark for another year passed – even more so than the annual reports.

Food can be so much more than sustenance. Certain foods, the way we make them, when and where we enjoy them, and who we enjoy them can all be important parts of culture and history. Our family’s annual gathering to make zongzi (or joong, in my native Cantonese) has become a treasured tradition.

These are dumplings made of glutinous rice, wrapped in bamboo leaves, and boiled for hours until it has a luscious, tender texture. The rice takes on the flavours of the adjacent filling, and as a result each bite is a bit different to the one before.

This year, 3 of us worked on 2400g of raw glutinous rice, 1200g of mung beans, and various fillings (which I went into detail on the first post I wrote on zongzi). Over 90 minutes, these turned into 66 individual dumplings – about 4 per minute per person, a decent rate considering one of those 3 people is the spectacularly inexperienced me.

These all went into a huge stock pot over two batches and covered with water. 30 minutes later the water (finally) comes to a boil, and the dumplings got simmered for 2 hours. Naturally, the next step is quality control – we unwrapped the zongzi and had ourselves a potluck party.

This year’s Dragon Boat Festival marks the third time I write about my family’s zongzi. Last year, I gave 10 beginner tips on how to get them right. I was hoping I could give some intermediate tips this year, but alas I have yet to reach that level yet.

Even so, I get better at them every year. While previously I had to spend my energy and effort into making sure my zongzi held together. Now that I’ve gotten the hang of it, I can afford to do some experimentation on how I can vary my technique to make my dumplings look better.

This is a continuation of my observation on the finger-side bias that I wrote about last year: how my dumplings tend to end up with a wonky lean because I would fill one side less than the other, out of fear that the fillings would spill out. That sparked my curiosity about how the wrapping technique affected the shape of zongzi – kind of like how a madman spent one year to quantify the quality of xiaolongbao.

There are many shapes of zongzi, but I’m most familiar with the pyramidal version (the other main shape is the tetrahedron, which I also showed how to make here). The wrapping begins by forming its peak, and I wanted to see how the final geometry would change based on how the peak is constructed.

Time for a disclaimer. I call it an experiment in the most loose sense of the word. Making zongzi is a very organic process. No two bamboo leaves are the same, the sizes of the fillings are similarly varied, and my technique is not stable enough for it to be considered a constant unchanging factor. But I did my best, and I hope it brings you some insights.

The Experiment

Keeping my technique as constant as I can, the only thing I will alter is how the pyramid’s peak is formed. You’ll see me try to center the peak in the photos the left, and deliberately shift the peak away from my hand in the photos on the right.

Beginning by making a cross with the bamboo leaves at roughly 30 degrees to each other, shiny side up. In terms of perspective, we’re at the base of the would-be zongzi pyramid and looking towards the top.

Here I make the cone by pinching the upper midline inwards, kind of how you’d make a funnel out of filter paper in a chemistry lab. Notice that in the left photo, the edge of the fold ends right where the ribs of the two leaves intersect, meaning that the tip is centered. Meanwhile on the right, the edge ends just a few milimeters off-center. I’ll admit it’s a very subtle difference, but you’ll be surprised at how much of a difference it makes.

Then I go about filling the zongzi. The order of operation is rice, mung bean, fillings, mung bean, rice. Then two leaves go on each side and folded towards the midline, then the excess leaves on the top and bottom are folded inwards as well to make a seal.

Here are the two zongzi after tying them up. The centered peak is on the left. Both pyramids have been turned around to sit on their base, so that the right side of the photos here corresponds to the left side of the earlier ones.

Look at the off-center zongzi. When I formed the peak, there’s a seam where the leaves folded in. You can see that seam ending before the rib of the leaf, and as a result the peak of the pyramid is off to one side rather than being right at the rib. It’s a big difference for a small change.

This is pretty enlightening. Tiny differences like that happen all the time, especially for a beginner like me who doesn’t have consistent technique. When those differences get compounded over several different steps of the dumpling wrapping process, the final geometry of the zongzi can wildly even when you’re trying to make them all nice and symmetrical. Practice makes perfect after all, and I have yet to put in the reps that it takes to get there.

Closing remarks

Unfortunately, we ran out of material before further experiments could be done. Things like how to ensure the fillings are tightly packed, whether it’s easier to close the left-sided or right-sided flap first, and whether it’s better to close the front flap or the back flap first once the side flaps are in place.

Maybe one day I’ll get good enough to nail the shape every time, but that’s not a major issue for now. It just means that I have more things to look forward to on the next Dragon Boat Festival, in addition to the comforting, cozy flavour of glutinous rice zongzi.

Cheers!
SWR
25 May 2025

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