How To Make Chinese Dumplings

In the middle of January, I decided that I was going to learn how to make Chinese dumplings for Chinese New Year.

To be honest, I dread going to Chinese restaurants in Rome because Chinese food here is simply too greasy and when it comes to dumplings, I am not sure what’s inside the filling!  Yes, I am a bit paranoid so when I crave Chinese food, I try my best to make them at home.

Unfortunately, things happen (had a fever and laryngitis) and I never got around to making them until today.  While I am still recovering from laryngitis, I figured I can still at least cook and blog about it.  That’s about the only consolation in having to stay at home.

So with my husband’s help in getting some ingredients from the Asian supermarket in Piazza Vittorio yesterday, I went about making these chinese dumplings today. These dumplings are also called potstickers and similar to japanese gyoza and korean mandu.

What I will say is that, for a first-time attempt, they turned out pretty decent but making tortellini and pumpkin ravioli is much easier than chinese dumplings!  At the end, I made my own wrapper and chose to make a vegetarian filling as I could recreate them for friends who love Chinese food but are vegetarian.  One day soon, I will make them with ground meat.

How to Make Chinese Dumplings – Vegetarian Filling

(Makes approx. 36 dumplings)

Filling

100 grams fresh mushrooms (this is what I had in the fridge) or shiitake mushrooms

200 grams Chinese / Napa cabbage

250 grams firm tofu

10 grams ginger grated

salt and pepper to taste

oil

1. Dice the mushrooms, tofu and finely chop the cabbage.

2. Heat a frying pan over medium heat, add some oil and cook the tofu.

3. Cook the cabbage and add a 1/4 cup of water.  Make sure it’s well cooked. Drain the cabbage and reserve the liquid for the dipping sauce.

4. Cook the mushrooms and if necessary use a strainer to drain any liquids.  You can discard  the liquid.

5. Combine all the cooked ingredients together with the grated ginger.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

Wrappers – From Scratch

2 cups (270 grams) of all-purpose flour

3/4 cup of water

1. Mix the flour and water together.  Don’t add all the water at one go.  Add 1/2 cup and add the rest as needed. You may not need to use all the water.

2. Knead for about 15 minutes, cover and leave them to rest for about 30 minutes.

3.  Using my pasta machine (thank goodness!), I rolled it out to the 2nd narrowest setting.  This was the perfect thickness.

4.  Use a 7cm round cookie cutter to get the round wrappers.

Note: Yeah, I cheated using the pasta machine and round cookie cutter! 🙂

Assembling the Chinese dumplings

Put a teaspoon of filling in the middle and I used the following to help me wrap the dumplings.

This step requires a lot of patience and making tortellini was much easier than wrapping Chinese dumplings.  There was a lot of folding involved and as you can see, I didn’t do too badly for a first attempt.

Cooking the dumplings

The dumplings are panfried then steamed but you can do this all in one pan.

1. Heat a pan that has a cover and coat the pan with some oil over medium heat.

2. When hot, place the dumplings and cook for 3-4 minutes then check to make sure the bottom is browned.

3. When browned, add 1/2 cup of water, cover and cook over low flame for about 8-10 minutes until all the water has evaporated.
4. Remove cover and cook a minute more to ensure the bottom is crisp.

Dipping Sauce

As I tend not to like salty food, I chose to use the liquid from the cabbage to dilute the soya sauce as the dipping sauce.  Basically, it’s one part soya sauce and three parts liquid from cabbage (2 tablespoons of soya sauce, 6 tablespoons of liquid from cabbage).

Final Thoughts
There are many different recipes for the filling and the next time around, I will also add glass noodles as suggested by my cousin.  Even though it was a long process, it was worth it.  I doubt I will make it weekly but a monthly treat would be possible especially since there are so many different types of filling to experiment with.

From my experience, the easiest part in the whole process was making the wrappers and the most time consuming was wrapping the dumplings.  I know some of you are experts at making Chinese dumplings and would like you feedback as to how to improve them.

Do you have another method on how to make Chinese dumplings?