Several months ago, I bought dumpling wrappers. The container had just been sitting in the freezer because I was scared to try to make them for the first time. I was imagining a very painful and endless process, which is why I kept delaying it. Yesterday, I woke up with the urge to finally give it a shot. We had ground pork in the freezer so I took it, as well as the dumpling wrappers, out to thaw. When I went to the market, I got some Napa cabbage for the filling. I wanted to look for a recipe online but there were so many that it was a little bit overwhelming. So I narrowed it down to a few and sort of mixed them together, adding my own little twist, to come up with a pretty successful final result. So enough, blabbering, here’s the recipe.
Pork Dumplings:
Ingredients:
– 1 pound of ground pork
– 1/2 of a small Napa cabbage, chopped
– 1 small onion, chopped
– 1 teaspoon of ground coriander (use fresh if it’s available to you)
– A handful of oyster mushrooms, chopped (other types would probably work as well but that’s what I had in the fridge)
– 1 tablespoon of ginger, minced
– 3-4 cloves of garlic, minced
– 3 tablespoons of soy sauce
– 1-2 tablespoons of sesame oil
– Dumpling wrappers
What’s Next?
1. Cook the pork. I cooked mine in a pot with some water so it would come apart more easily. I did have to drained it though to remove the excess water before adding it to the mixing bowl. You don’t need to cook it too long, you just don’t want raw pork.
2. Mix all the ingredients in a bowl.
3. Although it wasn’t in any recipe I read, I decided to put the ingredients in the food processor for an even texture. If you skip this step, make sure that everything is very finely chopped.
4. Drain the mixture through a fine-mesh strainer to get rid of most of the liquid. Otherwise, your dumplings will get soggy. (I learned after my first batch of 5)
5. Put about 1 teaspoon to 1/2 tablespoon of mixture (you might be able to put more, depending on the size of your wrappers) in the middle of the wrapper, and close it in half. You can use a bit of water to help the side stick together. Make sure that the dumplings are completely closed, no opening.
6. Steam the dumplings for 10 minutes.
7. Serve immediately or let them cool to eat them later. I put half of ours in the freezer to use later. If you wait to eat them (even if it’s just an hour or so), you can simply steam them again to get the perfect texture.
That’s it! It probably looks more complicated than it really is. As I told my husband, it’s a lot of repetitive movements but none of it is really hard. I didn’t have much room to steam my dumplings so I was putting them 5 at a time. While one batch was cooking, I was making the next one. The only thing I might change in the future might be to use chicken instead of pork so it won’t be so fatty. Otherwise, I’ll probably stick to this recipe in the future. Well, unless I get all adventurous again… 🙂
The Hungry Quebbie 
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