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Thursday, August 6, 2009
Recipe It's a wrap: Making Chinese dumplings
Posted By Priscilla Tsai on Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 4:24 PM
Each week, a group of friends and I participate in our own little dinner club in which we take turns hosting a potluck dinner. The host usually takes care of the main dish, and the others bring sides, appetizers, desserts, or drinks.
It was my turn to host dinner club this past week. This time, instead of cooking a main dish on my own, I showed my guests how to wrap their own Chinese dumplings/potstickers and I put them to work.
All you have to do is drop a little scoop of filling in the middle of a pre-made dough wrapper, use your finger to swipe some water around the edges, fold it up, and voila! The filling is a mix of ground pork, scallions, soy sauce, sesame oil, napa cabbage, onion, ginger, and Chinese cooking wine.
Here they are hard at work. They were pros by the end.
And here are our little dumplings. (Um, don't mind the one in the corner with meat busting out...not sure what happened there.)
By the end of the meal, we had all turned into little dumplings. Full, round, and about to bust at the seams from eating too much. A success!
Pork Dumplings (recipe from Epicurious.com)
Dumpling filling:
1 pound well-ground, fatty pork
1 pound Napa cabbage
1 tablespoon fresh grated ginger
2 tablespoons water
2 scallions
(I added 1/2 a diced onion too)
4 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon Chinese cooking wine or sherry
2 teaspoons sesame oil
1 teaspoon fine salt
Pinch of white pepper
1 package frozen dumpling wrappers (Available at specialty Asian markets)
small bowl of water
To make the filling:
If the pork is not finely ground, mince well with a knife. Place the pork in a large bowl and cover.
Bring a large pot of water to boil over high heat. Add the cabbage; blanch until just wilted. Using a slotted spoon, remove cabbage to strainer set over a large bowl. Press down on cabbage to squeeze out all liquid. Transfer to cutting board; roughly dice.
Meanwhile, place grated ginger in a small bowl; cover with water and let steep for a few minutes.
Slice scallions lengthwise, then thinly slice. You should have a good mixture of white, light green, and dark green pieces. Add to the bowl with the pork.
Place a strainer over the pork bowl; strain the ginger so that the juices are added to the bowl. Press down on ginger to squeeze out all juices. Discard ginger left in strainer.
Add the soy sauce, cooking wine, sesame oil, salt, and pepper to the meat mixture. Stir in chopped cabbage until completely incorporated. Add onion, if you choose to.
To wrap the dumplings:
Using a spoon or chopsticks, place one heaping tablespoon of dumpling filling in the center of the dumpling wrapper.
Using your fingertip, wet the outer edge of the dumpling wrapper with water. Fold up the sides of the dumpling into a half-moon shape.
While holding the dumpling lengthwise, curved side up, use your index finger and thumb to pinch the edges of the dough on one side of the dumpling into "pleats," pressing each pleat against the flat side of the dough to seal the dumpling as you go. Start at one corner of the dumpling and work your way to the center (making three to four "pleats"). Then work from the other corner to the center creating another three to four "pleats."
Firmly press the pleated side of the wrapper against the flat side to be sure the dumpling is completely sealed. If there is too much filling and the dumpling cannot be sealed, remove the extra filling to prevent leakage during cooking.
Line up the finished dumplings on a foil-lined cookie sheet to prevent them from sticking. You can freeze dumplings this way for up to one month.
To cook:
To cook the dumplings, gently lower them into a medium pot of boiling water and boil for approximately three to five minutes. They are done when the dumpling skins are translucent and the dumplings have been floating for about three minutes. Remove from pot carefully with a slotted spoon.
...or you can...
Fry them as potstickers! Just heat a few tablespoons of oil in a pan. Add dumplings, and fry the bottoms for 4 minutes. Add in a cup of water, and immediately put a lid over the pan. Let the dumplings steam for 5-7 minutes until cooked through.
Serve hot with soy sauce.
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