How to Make Chinese Dumplings
This article is about how to make good Chinese Dumplings. Before you make them, you need to buy the 6 basic ingredients listed in the "Things You'll Need" section.
[edit] Ingredients
- Some dumpling wraps
- Minced or ground pork or lamb
- Napa cabbage
- Salt
- Black pepper
- Sesame oil
- Balm, a green vegetable also know as 韮 in Chinese or Japanese.
- Tai bai fen, cooking starch made from potatoes or cassava (or substitute with arrowroot powder or corn starch).
[edit] Steps
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Shred the cabbage and put into a stainless pot.
- Mix the cabbage and minced meat together by hand.
- Ground meat is meat finely chopped by a meat grinder. Pork and lamb are generally preferred for Chinese dumplings, but beef, chicken, and turkey may be used as well. In South Asia both lamb (mutton) and goat meat are popular. The process of mincing is usually done manually.
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Add the balm, salt and a little tai bai fen (cornstarch/cornflour) and mix again.
- Massage the cabbage mixture with your hand for 10 min to make it dry.
- While you massage the mixture, if you feel that there is not enough tai bai fen, you should add more.
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Put the mixture on the wrapping. Two types of wrappers are readily available in supermarkets and Asian food stores. Wonton wrappers (also called skins) are delicate and paper-thin, usually about a thirty-second of an inch thick. They typically come in three-inch squares and are made from flour, eggs, and salt. These wrappers, which are Chinese in origin, are suitable for boiling, steaming, deep-frying, and pan-frying.
- wet the edge with a damp finger and fold the sides together, crimping (pressing together) with your fingers to seal the contents inside. Simple mechanical "dumpling presses" are also available to simplify this process.
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Wrap the crusts up as in the picture below.
- Put the dumplings in boiling water. First, they will sink but in 2-3 minutes they should come up, which indicates that they are cooked.
- Transfer them carefully from the pot to a plate and enjoy.
[edit] Tips
- Don't put too much filling into the crusts. They can be broken easily.
- Cook a sample of the filling in a microwave or frying pan if you want to check your seasonings.
- Keep the water at a gentle boil. The water should not be a rolling boil or the dumplings may break.
- When you eat the dumplings, you can use any sauce you want. We recommend soy sauce, spicy sauce, and garlic sauce.
- You can fry the dumplings instead of boiling them.
