A quick review for the chicken shu mai at Trader Joe's ($2.99 for 18 dumplings and one soy sauce packet):
We love dumplings, so we were interested in trying these shu mai. The filling ingredients were listed as chicken, onions, carrots, green onions, sesame oil, salt, garlic, ginger, and white pepper, so we thought they would be pretty flavorful, but they were kind of bland. The dipping sauce consisted of soy sauce, sugar, and rice vinegar, so your basic dumpling dipping sauce, and the shu mai absolutely needed it. They gave two heating instructions on the box: pan-frying (which is clearly what they did for the box photo) and steaming in the microwave. Since this was a snack for us, we chose microwave for faster heating (even though it took longer than the box instructions) and easier clean-up, but pan-frying probably would have tasted better. That said, we're still really not sure how much better they would have tasted after pan-frying considering how lacking in flavor the dumpling innards were.
Buy again? Unlikely. There are much better dumplings at TJ's and elsewhere.
