Recipe chinese dumplings and potstickerswarning a long postDo you know what that one recipe was that started you on your cooking passion I have cooked since I was a kid, but I didnt get serious until I was a sophomore in college and I felt this cultural obligation to make dumplings from scratch to celebrate the Chinese New Year. Dumplings have lodged themselves in my head as my link to Chinese cooking and culture, but even better than that mastering dumplings gave me the confidence to go forward and try other recipes and techniques. I posted Making Chinese Dumplings with Jen on my website several years ago it now lives here. People have written asking about fillings, thanking me for my recipe, asking me to post more versions The endeavor to make Chinese dumplings isnt like pouring a can of soda its quite involved and taking the photos adds considerably more time. Seeing as my days of free time may be near an end, I decided Making Chinese Dumplings with Jen could use an upgrade and an added variation. Besides, that old version was created in graduate school, a time of simultaneously happy and extremely bad, miserable, loathsome, angry, depressing, unhappy associations for me. Chinese-Potstickers-Recipe-with-Pork-and-Napa-Cabbage.png' alt='Pot Stickers Recipe' title='Pot Stickers Recipe' />First off, the process for making the dumplings and the potstickers is the same until you actually cook them. You steam or boil the dumplings, you pan fry mmmm, fry the potstickers. I ate enough dumplings in my childhood that I feel I need to make up for it with potstickers now. Thats not true Im a sucker for fried things. I generally make true dumplings on Chinese New Year because Mom and Grandma have scared me into thinking Ill be poor if I dont. Something about eating dumplings means money, tofu is luck, something else is health, and the list goes on. I play it safe and eat everything. The biggest time sink in making dumplings for me, anyway is chopping everything into a mince. I dont doubt people have tried and will continue to try using a food processor. Yes friends, you read that correctly. Were making CrockPot Candy These delectable chocolateandnut clusters become one of the easiest things in the world to. Ive done that before and I think it leads to inferior texture in your filling. A food processor is great at creating a pure or unevenly chopped pieces but neither of those is what we want. Use a good, sharp knife and give yourself plenty of time. I used to have dumplings every Sunday night as a kid and without all the work Mom, Dad, and Grandma whipped them up in an hour or two. Its quite the production with the three master chefs going all three are AMAZING cooks. Alas, I am so OCD that I dont allow my two housemates to help me Jeremy gets dish duty and no one wants Kaweah to help and it takes about 3 hours to produce 1. If you like Chinese dumplings, these vegetarian pot stickers will blow your mind They are very easy to make contrary to what people may think and dumpling skins. Im not shooting the process. Anyway, the big treat was when my mom would make shrimp dumplings. They were so good. I tried to make some once without consulting her on the ingredients. Cocky me, I thought it was so simple to figure out. They burned and tasted not quite right. I called her while I examined the potsticker with disappointment. Pot Stickers Recipe' title='Pot Stickers Recipe' />You need to add pork Oh, I didnt know you added pork meat. You need to add at least as much pork as the shrimp or more. Or else there isnt enough fat and it wont taste as good and will burn. Mom to the rescue. I suppose if you steam or boil, then you dont need to use pork but Mom is right that the pork adds flavor via fat that the shrimp cant do on its own. The dough is something Ive cheated on. I use my Cuisinart with dough blade to mix the dough. My moms method is probably more authentic and consistent, but I suck at it. She mixes the flour and water with chopsticks. I know some people use wonton wrappers, but those have egg in the dough and they obviously arent as good as fresh homemade. I dont use them, but I could see where making the dumpling skins could be daunting. Im hoping my instructions will inspire others to make their own dough. To make the dough discs, I slice the lump into 4 strips and roll each strip into an even cylinder about 1 14 inches in diameter. I slice the strip into pieces about 34 inch thick, rotating the strip by 9. Then I press each slice into a circular disc. The more circular you can get the disc, the easier time youll have of rolling it out. I have to work quickly in Colorado because our air is generally so dry today we are at 1. I tend to cut a dozen and put the remaining dough under a damp kitchen towel while I work. Once I have a flat, round disc of dough, I like to roll it out once to less than 14 inch thickness and then turn it 9. The next step is where some fingers may get pinched, but with practice it goes very quickly. Pick up the the edge of the dough in one hand, and with the other hand, roll the rolling pin on the edge nearest to you, but not past the middle. Thin out the dough with a couple of rolls and then turn the disc 6. You want to leave the middle just slightly fatter than the edges. The disc should be between 3 and 4 inches in diameter. Homemade Sangria. The shape of your dumpling skin will determine how easily you can fold your dumplings and probably how pretty they turn out. Ive taught several white people how to fold dumplings in person and some of them dont quite make that connection between the dumpling skin that resembles the map view of Italy and the dumpling that looks like that scene from Alien when the little critter bursts forth from Kanes chest yeah. Well, assuming you have a circular wrapper you plop enough filling in the center and allow about 12 inch of margin. Take your chopsticks thats what I use to handle the filling and shape it into an oval on the dough. Fold the two ends of dough on the short axis of the filling together like a taco and pinch them tight at the top. From there, move about 14 of the way down from center and create a fold in the edge of the dough closest to you, fold it down and pinch it tight. Youre creating a pleat in the dough. Repeat this two or three more times enough to leave a teardrop opening at the end. I like to poke the end of the teardrop in and then pinch it shut. Now half of the dumpling is folded. Turn the dumpling around so the pleats are facing away from you and pleat toward the center on the same side as the pleats you just made. The whole thing should curve into a crescent form concave toward you. After the pleats are done and the other corner is pinched in, I go over the entire crest and pinch it tight because any openings will result in filling leaking out or other unsightly issues. The final dumpling should be a neat and pretty package. Making a hundred dumplings isnt easy on the back. There is no way I can work the dough on my kitchen counters they are too high. I work on my kitchen table because the height allows me to use my weight when rolling out the dough. Dont forget to take a break and give your body a stretch. Lets have a look at our faithful companion Shes never far from the action in the kitchen. I like to line my dumplings neatly on a large plate. I can typically fit all of the dumplings on a plate in one batch to cook in my large frying pan. Before I place a finished dumpling on the plate, I gently rub the base of the dumpling in a thin layer of flour on the work surface. It helps to prevent sticking to the plate which can destroy a dumpling when you need to quickly set them in the frying pan. Frying potstickers is the more complex of the different ways to prepare dumplings. Its quite simple though. I use a large non stick frying pan with high sides and cover. First you pan fry the dumplings in a little bit of oil a few tbsps on medium high heat. When the bottoms get golden, ready yourself with the lid and in one swift move pour water into the pan duck while everything spatters violently and clap the lid on Ive made several messes over the years during this step. A measuring cup with a spout helps a lot and you have to dump the water in ALL AT ONCE. When the water boils off, remove the lid and reduce the heat to medium or medium low. This allows the potstickers to dry out and crisp up. Light Pot Stickers Recipe.