Dumplings and Potstickers

Almost every type of cuisine has the concept of a filling wrapped with some sort of dough, but Chinese dumplings (jiaozi) are probably one of the most well known kinds out there. Dumplings can actually be made fairly easy at home. The process isn't complicated; it just takes some time to prep them.

Dumplings can be cooked several different ways. The two most common that I'll cover here are boiled in water (shui jiao), and pan-fried on the bottom / steamed on the top (guo tie, also called potstickers).

Ingredients

Wrappers

• 1 pack of dumpling wrappers
  • The next time I make the wrappers from scratch I'll update, but this time I just used the premade ones. There are many different brands, but here's one example.

Filling

• 1 lb meat and vegetables
  • The kinds of meat and vegetables are up to you. Pork is probably the classic choice, so if you want to keep it simple you can go with 1lb ground pork like I did here. However, it's pretty flexible in the types and ratios of ingredients. Some additional variations are:
  • 2/3 lb ground pork, 1/3 lb shrimp diced
  • 1/2 lb ground pork, 1/2 lb Chinese cabbage chopped
  • 3/4 lb ground pork, 1/4 lb Chinese leek chopped
  • Other meat choices are ground beef or ground chicken. Other vegetable options are chopped spinach, shredded zucchini, shredded chinese turnip (Daikon radish), green onions, or tofu.
• 3 green onions, chopped
• 1 tsp grated ginger
• 4 tbsp sesame oil
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• Salt
• 1 egg

Dipping Sauce

• Soy sauce
• Sesame oil
• Chinese black vinegar (optional)

Your dipping sauce base can be either entirely soy sauce, or 1/2 soy sauce 1/2 black vinegar. Add a small amount of sesame oil on top (maybe 1/2 tsp).

Directions

Filling

1. Put the meat and vegetables, green onions, and ginger in a large bowl.
2. Mix together thoroughly. It's easiest with your hands.
3. Add sesame oil, soy sauce, and salt to taste.
4. Mix together again.
5. Add the egg.
6. Mix again.

Dumplings

1. Lay a single dumpling wrapper flat, and add a small amount of filling in the middle, about 2-3 tsp.
2. Dip your finger in a bowl of water and wet the edge of the wrapper (the entire circumference).
3. Bring opposite ends of the wrapper together and pinch together, kind of like a taco or a cannoli.
4. Holding the pinched middle with your left fingers, fold the right side of the dumpling wrapper closer to you into little pleats towards the middle of the dumpling, sealing the pleats against the top half of the dumpling wrapper. Note that you're only pleating one side of the wrapper - the other side stays flat.
5. Hold the pinched middle with your right hand, and similarly pleat the left side towards the middle.
6. Dip your fingers in water again, and pinch along the edge to make sure it's fully sealed.
7. Repeat until you've used up all of the filling. Refrigerate or freeze if you aren't planning to cook them immediately.

Boiled Dumplings

1. Bring a large pot of water to boiling. Add the dumplings to the boiling water.
2. Bring the water back to a boil and cook until the dumplings are floating, which means they're fully cooked. You want to make sure that the dumplings are floating naturally and not due to the boiling water, so the way to check this is to add a cup of cold water to pause the boiling. If the dumplings are floating after the cold water, they're ready - let the pot come back to a boil and take them out with a slotted spoon. If they're not ready, add another cup of cold water after the water boils. Most of the time this takes 1 or 2 cups of cold water, depending on the thickness of the wrappers you used.
   • As the dumplings are cooking, you'll want to check that they aren't sticking to the pot either. You can very gently push them with a spoon to unstick them, but be very careful not to break the dumplings.
3. Remove from the pot once they're ready. You can optionally drizzle a little sesame oil on them to keep them from sticking to each other. Serve with dipping sauce.

Potstickers

1. Add a couple tablespoons of oil to a skillet, and fill with dumplings. Pack them fairly tightly, touching each other, but not tight enough to change the dumplings' shape.
2. Turn the heat on medium high. Cook the dumplings until the bottoms are very slightly browned. You can check this by very gently lifting the edge of the dumplings with chopsticks, but be careful not to break them.
3. Add some cold water to the pan - enough to come up about 1/3 of the way up the sides of the dumplings. Immediately cover the pan so the boiling water can steam the tops of the dumplings.
4. Cook until the water is fully evaporated - you can tell since the sound will change from a boiling sound back to a frying sound. Remove the lid, and continue frying the bottoms of the dumplings until they get browned and crispy.
5. Turn off the heat. Shake the pan a little to help loosen the potstickers, and then flip upside down onto a serving plate so the crispy part is visible. Since they were packed tightly, they'll come out in one piece. Serve with dipping sauce.
   • If your plate is big enough to cover the entire pan, put the plate face down on the pan, hold the two together tightly, and flip over so the plate is underneath the pan.
   • If your plate isn't big enough, slide the dumplings out onto one plate, cover with another plate, and similarly hold them tightly together and flip upside down.