Chinese dumpling Recipe- Juicy and Delicious
Author’s Note:
Time for a Chinese folk-tale that I heard growing up about Chinese Dumplings.
A long long time ago (not sure how long ago) in a small village (somewhere) in China, there was a poor family that have been struggling financially for years due to the poor crop return. Although they’re poor, the family is thankful to have each other. Each year the two children look forward to Chinese New Year because it is the only few days in the year where their parents splurge and buy meat to cook.
On Chinese New Year, the ground was covered with snow, and the wind was harsh. The beautiful dumpling has been in making for hours, the kids are full of excitement with their mouth watered staring at the dumplings being made by their parents. As dinner is about to be served, there was a knock on the door. The parents and the kids looked at each other, and thought to themselves ‘we aren’t expecting any guest’.
As they opened the door, there was a man shivering in the cold with his beard covered in snow & ice. The mom and dad, immediately invited the man into the house and sat him next to the fire. The man was thin and pale, the parents thought to themselves ‘it is Chinese New Year, where is this man’s family?’ and invited him to join them for dinner.
As dinner started, the man was starving without a single words of introduction he popped each of the dumplings into his mouth quickly and devoured the plates. The children had their eyes wide opened watching their precious dumplings being eaten by this strange man. The man finally looked up from the food and said ‘more’.The mom cooked the rest of the dumplings, and as she went back into the kitchen to scoop the rest of the boiling dumplings from the boiling pot. Something strange happened, there were more and more dumplings surfaced the boiling water. As she returned with the food, the man said to her ‘don’t count how many dumplings there are left’
Everyone ate happily and full. After the dinner, the man thanked the family and left. Later as she was cleaning the pot, she found gold ingots in the shape of dumplings at the bottom.
This is why when the Chinese cook Dumplings at home we don’t count how many we make, we always make extra. It is a tradition for us to make dumpling on the new year because the shape of dumpling is like gold and silver ingots, which were currencies in ancient China. It is meant to bring us wealth for the new year.
Serving: 40 dumplings (4 servings) Prep & Cook Time: 90 minuteChinese Juicy Dumplings or Gyoza
Ingredients for ‘Wealth’
- 2-3 diced garlic clove
- 1 tea spoon of diced ginger
- 1.1 lb/.5 kg of preferred ground meat (since Furqan doesn’t eat pork, I use ground turkey or chicken)
- Flexible stuffing (1 pick from these options, you can play with the flavors)
- 1/2 cup of chopped cilantro/coriander (go crazy) with 1/2 cup of chives
- 1 cup of chopped finely zucchini (need to put salt on the zucchini and squeeze out all of the water)
- 1 egg (to soften the meat)
- 3-4 table spoon of soy sauce (Any brand is fine, I buy Kikkoman)
- Salt & black pepper to taste
- 1 small drip of sesame oil
- 1 table spoon of corn starch
- 2-3 table spoon of cooking oil (Chicken/Turkey you may need more oil since it’s lean)
- 1 package of dumpling skin
How to be rich:
- Chop the garlic, ginger, cilantro and put in a big bowl
- Put the ground meat in the bowl and add soy sauce, cilantro, chive, black pepper, and egg
- Mix throughly (until there is resistance to mixing)
- My secret trick is to get a pan and cook a small bite of the mix to see if it is salty enough, if not add salt & pepper
- Now the fun begins, let’s fold! (See below for how to fold dumpling)
Two ways to cook dumplings:
- Boil: Boil water, and once you finished wrapping throw the wontons in the boiling water to let it cook for 6-8 minutes. If frozen 10-12 minutes
- Pan fry: Left over wontons are perfect for pan fry. Heat the pan to hot, drizzle cooking oil in the pan and spread the oil evenly across. Put the dumplings in the pan let it sizzle until the bottom is golden. Add water into the pan until you almost cover all of the dumplings. Put the lid over the pan and cook until the liquid evaporate. It is ready to be served! So easy hm?
Magic touch sauce to dip the dumpling in:
- 1 tea spoon spoon of chopped cilantro and green onion (even garlic)
- 2 table spoon of Chinese Black Vinegar ( I personally like it more sour, up to your own taste)
- 1 table spoon of soy sauce
- a drip of sesame oil
- Optional: Jen’s Spicy Hot Oil
