Zongzi

The night before, rinse your rice with water until water runs clear. Soak rice in water overnight.
In a bowl, combine soy sauce, sugar, five-spice powder, Shaoxing wine, and water. Add in pork belly and stir a few times until all pieces are covered in marinade. Marinade overnight in the fridge. I recommend stirring around the meat at the half-way point so that the meat at the bottom doesn't become saltier and more marinated than the pieces on top.
On the day of wrapping first soak bamboo leaves in a large container for about 30 minutes. This will wash off any dirt or dust and should make your leaves soft enough so that you can fold them to get them to fit into a large pot. Boil leaves in a large pot for about 10 minutes, or until all the leaves are pliable and look evenly wet and slightly more brown.
Drain water from sticky rice. Lightly dry your leaves. Gather all your ingredients and place them on your working surface. I also recommend you cut the twine ahead of time. I used 3 1/2 feet per dumpling, but this length will vary depending on the size of your dumplings and how many times you need to wrap to secure. You may want to do a practice one to get the idea of the length you need, and then pre-cut the rest of the twine based on that length.
For the rest of the wrapping steps, please refer to photos above for more details. Choose two bamboo leaves that are approximately the same size. Snip off the hard ends. Place the leaves so that the shiny side faces down and the dull side faces up. Arrange the leaves so that the two pointy ends are facing each other. Then push the leaves inward, so that the leaves overlap halfway (basically the pointy edge of one leaf should be halfway up the length of the other leaf).
Holding where the pointy ends are, fold inward on both sides until you form a cone with a pointy bottom. The excess portion of the leaves not in the cone from both sides should be about the same length.
Fill the bottom of your cone with some rice. Then add about 5 pieces of pork belly. I also liked drizzling a little of the excess marinade onto the rice. Add 4-5 peanuts and half an egg yolk. Then fill the top with more rice. You can fill up close to the edge of the top of the cone, but leave a little room. Pinch both sides of your cone (see photo), then take the top leaves and fold down and over. This should form a triangle. Take the excess leftover leaves and fold around the triangle. It doesn't matter which side but I found there was always a side that needed a few more folds to help secure filling. Make sure all your fold are tight.
Take your pre-cut twine and start wrapping around your dumpling to secure all the folds. I usually wrapped three times going one direction and then 2-3 times the other way. When you are done, double knot the string. Set aside and repeat with remaining dumplings.
To cook, fill a large pot with water and put dumplings in. Boil for about 2 hours or until rice is tender. You can also steam, but it will take about 4 hours. Or you can use a multi-function pressure cooker and steam for about 35 minutes.
You can store cooked zongzi in the freezer for several months. Just re-steam to eat.

Ingredients

Instructions

Notes