Still cooking my way through ZAO FAN. I made a batch of xiao jiaozi a few days back and have been searching for the ideal way to cook them. The book says boiling‘s the way to go, but I find it sucks all the flavour out of the meat and encourages the dumplings to pop apart. Today I tried steaming, with much better results. Some of them still came apart, which makes me think I messed up the meat paste a bit, but they stayed juicy and toothsome.