I don’t even know how these things suddenly became a thing. I never had them until moving to LA, not in Armenia, not in the surrounding Republics. Technically it’s a Tatar dish, not Armenian.
p.s. regarding buns vs dumplings, i don’t actually care. Just having fun with nomenclature.
Same here. Been popping them in my mouth without ever giving it any thoughts. I guess the problem really comes out of translation to English since even the South China Morning articles call XLB a dumpling. lol
this argument in terms of nomenclature was more prevalent in the past.
while bao alone usually means some sort of bun, it isn’t used exclusively to define food when used in conjunction with other characters, bao’s semantic meaning becomes more about what it surrounds.
for example, xin bao refers to the pericardium, the lining on the outside of the heart, NOT buns with a heart filling. hong bao (lucky money) is typically a red envelope NOT buns of red.
as such, i’m comfortable sticking with my semantic definition and referring to XLB as dumplings, because to me that’s what they resemble the most when referring to them as a type of food world wide. similarly,i could spend 10 minutes trying to explain what a dong zi is, or just describe it as a chinese tamale that uses sticky rice and move on.
And to quote one of the response which I couldn’t agree more:
"It’s much more of a cultural/linguistic thing
In Mandarin(MY Edit: and even in Cantonese), there is no generic word for ‘dumpling’. Every dumpling has its own individual name, be it a xiao long bao (soup dumpling), jian jiao (pan fried dumplings) or baozi (steamed soft bread bun filled with bbq pork or other fillings). Chinese people consider them all ‘dumplings’, in that they are all some kind of savory starchy thing filled with some kind of meaty/veggie thing.
Also, if you hang out with non-American Chinese people long enough, you’ll find that they don’t get all caught up in semantics. They don’t particularly care what it’s called, as long as it tastes good. (similarly, you’ll find that hardly any Chinese people use chopsticks the ‘correct’ way illustrated on the chopstick wrapper… they really don’t care, as long as it works)"
At best, 餃 is the closest there is to “dumpling” which encompasses many sort of closed as well as non-closed “dumplings”. Adding to the confusion, if you look up 餃 in a dictionary, the definition comes out as “stuffed dumpling; ravioli”.
We live in Reno and, while we have good to very good “Asian” food and other cuisines, we have NO dim sum. A few years ago I actually went to SF and took an Asian dumpling class from Andrea Nguyen. We get to Seattle and/or SF four or five times a year and dim sum is always a must. We used to live in SF and I can’t even remember what it was like being able to have it any time I wanted
I’ve eaten at the two of the three of them in Seattle. And ‘swoon’ over their XLB. I’ve had them at a couple of other places in SF and DTF’s were far and away the best I’VE ever had. They sagged under the weight of the fillings but were still light and didn’t tear. I also made them once. They were good but not great and WAY too much work as far as I was concerned.