People who tried my dumplings always tell me they are really good (well, I hope they are not lying). In the past months, many people asked me about my recipe(s) for the dumplings.  But I am kinda lazy and often forget to write it down for my friends (sorry). Since I started this blog, I decided to write about three main features life style, food & travelling, so I will share my dumpling recipe with you today. I will start with the most easy ones and later on I can always write about more complicated ones (don’t be too greedy haha).

Making dumpling isn’t that difficult, it just takes a lot of time and many details you have to pay attention to. So let’s do some grocerie shopping first.

What do you need: Minced pork (I use 2 kg for 8 pers),

Chinese Cabbage,

Celery,

Dried mushrooms,

salt,

spring onion,

ginger,

chicken powder (optional),

egg (optional),

black pepper (optional),

and most important—dumpling dough (I bought frozen ones this time in the Chinese supermarket here because I didn’t have time  to make dough for 8 persons)

(minced pork with finely chopped ginger, 2 tea spoon salt and 1 tea spoon of chicken powder)

(I already soaked the dried mushrooms in water for more than 8 hours before I use them, normally you can soak them in hot/warm water for 2 hours prior to use)

  (Dried mushroom before soaked in water)

Before you make the dumplings: find a big bowl to mix the dumpling stuffing; de-freeze the meat and dough if necessary; dip all the dried mushrooms in warm water for at least 2 hour or cold water for half a day before use

How to make the stuffing: 

I made two kinds for my friends, the basics are 1 kg of minced pork, finely chopped ginger, spring onion & mushrooms, salt, and chicken powder. But one of them is with Chinese Cabbage, the other one is with Celery.

I combined about 10-12 slices of Chinese cabbage with 1 kg minced pork and one whole celery for the other 1 kg minced pork.

Step 1: chop the Chinese cabbage, Celery, Spring Onion and Ginger finely

Attention! Squeeze most of the water out of the cabbage, mushroom and celery, otherwise the stuffing will be waaaaay too wet!!! A lot of people fail to make tasty dumplings simply because they skip this step.

Step 2:

For the cabbage one: pork, 10-12 slices of cabbage, 2 tea spoons of salt, 1 tea spoon of chicken powder, 3 pieces of spring onion, 8-10 mushroom

use chopsticks or hands to mix the stuffing, if you choose chopsticks, please bear in mind to stir the stuffing in ONE direction. Left or Right but not both directions. 

For the celery one: pork, whole celery, ginger, 3 pieces of spring onion,  2 tea spoons of salt, 1 tea spoon of chicken powder, some ground black pepper, 8-10 mushrooms

Step 3: see whether it is too wet , if it’s too dry you can add an egg

I used one egg in the celery because celery isn’t as moist as the Chinese cabbage.

Step 4: fold (prepare some water)

 Use your finger tip to put some water on the edge of the dumpling dough to make sure that dumplings will close well and not pop open during cooking. 

Step 5: Cook the dumplings 

Bring water to the boil, put dumplings in the boiling water. Once it starts boiling, pour a full glass of cold water in the pan, bring it to boil again. Repeat this step twice and your dumplings are ready to serve.

Fried ones: add oil and a small amount of salt to the pan, wait until it is really HOT, put the dumplings in the pan and fry both sides light brown. Add a tiny bit of water (about 2 table spoons) in the pan and IMMEDIATELY put the cover on for steaming. Wait for about 1 minute, ready to serve.

Dipping sauce:

None Spicy version:2 table spoons of rice vinegar, 1 table spoon of light soy sauce, chopped garlic

Spicy version: 2 table spoons of rice vinegar, 1 table spoon of light soy sauce, chopped garlic and half table spoon of chill sauce

Enjoy!

Picture taken by: Fuji film X10

Fleur, big thanks for taking all the pictures  🙂

xx

Ting