Chinese Dumplings
I made chinese dumplings last night, half the batch is pork and half is vegetarian (but includes egg). You can really make the filling anything you want. My filling was:
Ground pork or crushed up vermicelli (rice noodles)
Scrambled egg
Finely minced chinese cabbage (it’s longer and has more stalk than regular cabbage)
Finely minced ginger
Finely minced green onion
Finely minced extra firm tofu
Finely minced enoki mushroom (shiitake works, too)
You’ll also need:
Store bought dumpling skins (round, not square)
Sesame Oil
Salt
Chop up the cabbage and put it into a bowl. Pour salt on top of the cabbage to extract excess water. Let the cabbage sit for 10 minutes or so. Afterwards, drain the water out of the bowl. It’s important to get the water out so that the filling sticks together.
Heat up the sesame oil in a wok, then throw in the ginger, green onion, and mushroom. Once that’s cooked (a few minutes), scramble in the egg. Set aside.
If you are putting in the rice noodles, boil them in water to soften them up.
Combine all of the ingredients together into a bowl and mix. Now comes the folding part. Place a dumpling skin into your palm. Wet your finger with a little water and wet along the edge of the skin. Place a small (size of a quarter or so) amount of filling in the center of the dumpling. Pull the center of the bottom up to the top and pinch it together. It should look like a cannoli. Take the right open end and fold that up to the center, which will split that end into two halves. Pinch the half closest to you shut. Fold the other half in half again, and pinch that against the center. Do the same for the left side. You’re done!
If the folding is too complicated, don’t worry. It’s all cosmetic - you can pinch it anyway you want, as long as the whole thing is sealed.
Once they are all made, you can either freeze them or cook ‘em up. Just throw it briefly in a pot of boiling water until it’s cooked through, should only take a few minutes. Or fry ‘em in sesame oil.
2 years ago