Cardboard Dumpling Outrage!:@
Amid a steep rise in pork prices this year, one small purveyor of pork dumplings in Beijing found a way to keep prices down and sales high — substitute cardboard.
Here’s the recipe, as captured by a television reporter with a hidden camera:
First, soak used cardboard with water and caustic soda, a poisonous chemical, until its color fades and its texture became tender. Then stir six cups of cardboard broth with two cups of lard or pork fat, one cup of dried soymilk sheet and one cup of leeks. Finally, stuff the cardboard mixture in a dough wrapper and steam until done.
Tips provided by the maker: Adding lard to the cardboard makes it taste more like pork, while mixing in dried soymilk sheet make the dumplings chewier.
"It may save me almost 1,000 yuan ($131.50) a day," the owner of the booth told a reporter from Beijing TV Channel 7 who posed as a customer.
Following the airing of the story, authorities on Thursday closed the booth, located in the Chaoyang District of Beijing. The owner fled and is wanted by the police for questioning.
The dumplings were prepared at a kitchen in nearby Taiyanggong Village. It was unclear how long the booth was serving the cardboard-filled dumplings, but a worker in the prep-kitchen told the TV reporter that it was a popular recipe known across the country due to the rapid rise of pork prices, which has pinched the wallets of ordinary Chinese. :s
But wait......
BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese court on Sunday sentenced a television reporter to one year in jail for fabricating a report that Beijing dumpling makers used cardboard as a filling.......... Thank goodness for that!
The official Xinhua news agency said the journalist, Zi Beijia, was convicted after an open court hearing of "infringing the reputation of commodities". He was also fined 1,000 yuan ($132).
Zi, a temporary reporter for Beijing television, was arrested after it emerged that he had cooked up a report that local makers of steamed dumplings were softening cardboard by soaking it in caustic soda and then flavoring it with pork juice.
Ah, dumpling lovers can rest easy
