Making xiao long bao is hard. The cook has to wrap a tiny dollop of meat plus a little frozen cube of jelly-like broth inside a thin circle of dough. Then they pinch the top with their fingers, making at least 18 perfect pleats. When the dumpling is steamed, the jelly melts and turns back into soup, trapped inside the dough.
Eating them takes a bit of practice. Pick up one dumpling carefully with chopsticks (or a spoon). Put it onto your soup spoon. Make a tiny hole in the top with your chopsticks so the steam can come out. Sip the soup, then eat the rest. If you bite it straight away, the soup is hot enough to burn your tongue.
Din Tai Fung is a Taiwanese restaurant that started as a small cooking-oil shop in Taipei in 1958. The owners began making dumplings on the side, and the dumplings became so famous that the shop turned into a restaurant. Today there are Din Tai Fung restaurants in many countries around the world.
At Din Tai Fung, every dumpling is checked. The cook weighs each dumpling to make sure it has exactly the right amount of filling. Each dumpling must have at least 18 pleats. If it doesn't, it doesn't go to the customer. That is how seriously Taiwanese cooks take their xiao long bao.