Cook: Easy Homemade Dumplings
Whenever I go home to Colorado, I love spending time in the kitchen with my family. Regardless of what type of get-together it is, you can usually find everyone gathered around the kitchen chatting but mostly scouting out snacks and sneaking in bites before the meal is actually served. During Thanksgiving, my very talented cousin-in-law Thao brought her camera over to snap some photos for my site. So, enjoy this post, because it has the best photos. Unfortunately, I can’t get her to come to California and snap me everytime I’m in the kitchen. The dumplings are good but my litto cousin Gracie definitely steals the show in this post!
This recipe will teach you how to make Japanese dumplings, aka gyoza. Dumplings of any kind are one of my favorite foods in the world. Once you master these, you can try to make winged gyoza which I’ll post in a separate recipe. If you’re trying to reduce meat from your diet, fill the gyoza with savory mushrooms and chives, no need for pork! But, if you’re making it the traditional way, I always pick pork as my protein. It incorporates all the flavors together perfectly.
Yield: 36 - 40 dumplings (depending on how much you fill them)
Ingredients:
1 lb ground pork
1/4 head of green cabbage (sliced and diced)
7-8 soaked shiitake mushrooms (chopped)
2-3 scallions (chopped)
1-2 tbsp grated ginger (depending on how much you like)
4-5 garlic cloves (peeled and finely chopped)
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 tbsp sake or mirin
1 tbsp shoyu
1-2 tsp brown sugar
1 tsp sesame oil
Circular gyoza wrappers (often called wonton wrappers). If you can’t find circle ones, you can use the square shaped ones and cut them with a lid to form a circle.
Dipping Sauce Ingredients:
Shoyu (Soy Sauce)
Garlic chili oil
Seasoned rice wine vinegar (use as much of this as you do shoyu.)
Directions:
Because cabbage is a tougher, leafy green, you’ll want to soften it up a bit before you put it in the mixture. My favorite way to do this is to sprinkle some kosher salt over the cabbage and let it sit. The moisture will come out within 15-20 minutes and then you can just soak it up with a paper towel. Once it’s nice and soft, chop it up. You don’t want long, stringy pieces coming out of your gyoza.
Next, mix up all the above ingredients in a bowl. Make sure everything is dispersed evenly among the mixture.
Take a spoonful of the mixture and put it in the middle of your gyoza wrapper. Lightly add some water around the edge and begin your folding process.
To fold your gyoza, you can simply press the ends together to make sure they are sealed. Or, if you want to get fancier, working from the middle make pleats from the right side moving towards the middle and then from the left side working towards the middle. It will create a pretty folded pattern. The video on the right shows how to do this folded pattern from right to left. Get as creative as you want!
To cook the gyoza, put some oil in a frying pan. Lightly brown the bottoms and then add about 1/4 cup of water to the pan. Put the lid on and steam for 3-5 minutes. The wrappers should begin to turn translucent. When the water has evaporated, add a little bit of sesame oil in the pan and stir fry a couple minutes longer until the bottoms are nice and crispy. Now, we’re ready to eat!
In between cooking, make your dipping sauce. The way I make this changes all the time but the essentials are really shoyu, rice wine vinegar and garlic chili sauce depending on how spicy you want the dip to be. Mix this up in a bowl and you’re ready to eat your dumplings.
ENJOY!
Bonus Filling: Chicken Cabbage Miso Dumplings! If you’re tired of pork (or you don’t eat pork) try using ground chicken. You can really fill these with whatever your heart desires.
1.5 lbs of ground chicken (thighs will be the tastiest)
1 cup or about 1/4 small head of napa cabbage (sliced and diced)
4 scallions (chopped)
1 tbsp ground ginger
1.5 tbsp white miso paste
2 tsp of sesame oil
1 tbsp sake or mirin
4-5 garlic cloves (diced)
2 tsp of brown sugar
1-2 tsp of kosher salt
The only different thing you’ll do with this recipe, is cook a little less than 1/2 of the chicken in oil. Mix this in with everything else and follow the same steps above.
Gather all your ingredients together.
Get everything prepped. All the filling goes into one bowl!
Give everything a good mix - you’re dumpling filling is done!
Fold your fillings into wrappers, get creative! This takes practice, you can see which ones were the starters, hehe.
Make your sauce - it helps to have the cutest sous chef.