'Bao' Pixar Dumpling Recipe
Though, hopefully, these little guys won't come to life
If you watched Bao, the animated short film preceding Incredibles 2, this past weekend, chances are you laughed, tried to hide the fact you were crying (thank you, dark theater) and, most of all, got a hankering to make some dumplings.
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Luckily, the film's director, Domee Shi, recently shared her mother's personal recipe for bao with Food & Wine. "Dumplings were a huge part of my childhood because I would make them with my mom—a lot," Shi tells the magazine. "To me, making dumplings is a family activity—you never really do it alone, you do it with your mom or your grandma, and she learned how to make dumplings from her grandma."
The short, which takes its cues from Shi's own family and upbringing, tells the story of a mother whose dumpling comes to life, giving the empty nester a second chance at motherhood. To get the dumpling-making process right, Pixar's animators used Shi's mom as a consultant, filming her cooking and folding techniques as a point of reference for the film.
However, it's all right if you take a few shortcuts when you make Shi's family recipe at home; the director notes that her mom personally prefers to do everything by hand and "won't use a food processor or a meat grinder," but will instead break out an old-school cleaver and spend time chopping everything together.