Lawyer Sells Pretty, Naturally Pink Pork Dumplings On Instagram

The enthusiastic responses gave Xuan Rong the idea to start a food business as a hobby. “There were other lawyers who went into F&B while in practice, like [Lyn Lee of] Awfully Chocolate. Since I had time during the CB, I thought of exploring my area of interest,” she reckons. She decided on making pink dumpling wrappers, and Instagrammed them to gauge the market demand. “The response was not bad. My friends were very encouraging,” she laughs.

After a two-month period of R&D, she launched the Instagram order-only Dizzy Dumplings on June 30. It offers pre-made dumplings that customers can buy to pan-fry, steam or boil at home. “There’s no story behind the name. I just wanted something that sounds very catchy,” she laughs.The brand’s cutesy cartoon dumpling logo was also something Xuan Rong “drew on Microsoft Powerpoint”. She says, “It was done on the fly, really. I didn’t give much thought to it. My business was born out of curiosity and a sense of adventure, ’cos I was bored during the circuit breaker.”

She creates pink dumpling skin by colouring it with natural juice from dragon fruit. “Initially I used beetroot, but the colour oxidises and changes while the dough is resting. So I stopped using it. Dragon fruit is good. The black specks from the seeds give the skin a bit of a ‘galaxy’ feel,” she explains.

There’s a waiting time of one to two weeks for her orders. Xuan Rong preps the skin on weekdays after work, and stuffs the dumplings on weekends before sending them out to customers on Sunday. “The dough needs to rest for one or two days before being rolled out. I make them as and when I get the orders,” she says. Delivery fee costs a flat $5 (while Xuan Rong was initially doing her own delivery runs, she has since engaged a courier company to deliver her orders). There’s also a free pickup option “anywhere in the north” of Singapore.

Currently, she has one dumpling flavour, Pork & Chive ($13.90 for 20 pieces). Other than minced pork and chopped chives, each dumpling is also loaded with a cube of chicken broth jelly, which melts into soup when the dumpling is cooked. She reveals, “I wanted the dumplings to be juicier, and was inspired by xiao long baos. I also make this sauce — I blend spring onions, ginger and garlic into a paste and pour heated oil over it to make a sauce. I mix it with the meat filling before I add any seasonings.”

She will soon be selling a new flavour, Truffle ($20 for 12 pieces), which has pork filling mixed with truffle paste. “I’m at the experimentation stage now, for the filling and colour of the skin,” she shares. It will be launched “no later than end-July”.

Xuan Rong started making dumplings while studying in London for her law degree. She recounts, “I lived there for three years. When I was there, my Singaporean friends and I craved Asian food a lot. We didn’t get to go out to restaurants often, and there weren't a lot of things I wanted to eat there, so we made dumplings."

While she intends to remain in law for the foreseeable future (“it would depend on how far I can take this biz”), she plans to eventually make Dizzy Dumplings into “an income-generating business”. She adds, “My long-term plan is to create a social enterprise. I plan to work with intellectually disabled children and adults, and teach them to make dumplings to help them become more self-sufficient. It’s very hard for them to find jobs as adults, because of the way they were born. (Sighs) I want to work with government agencies and see how we can equip them with skills.”

WhatsApp 96641507 to order. www.instagram.com/dizzydumplings.

PHOTOS: @DIZZYDUMPLINGS