Filling:
- 3 lb ground chicken
- 1.5 lb cabbage, cut into manageable pieces (fist sized)
- 2 tablespoon salt
- 1 onion
- 4 cloves garlic
- 2 teaspoon sesame oil
- 2 Tablespoon soy sauce
- 2 tablespoon sugar
- 1-2 teaspoon white pepper
Wrappers
- We usually purchase pre-made wrappers from our local Asian grocery store. See here.
Special Equipment:
- Food processor
- If you don’t have a food processor, you can use a blender or a cheese grater as a last resort
Instructions:
- In batches (how many will depend on the size of your food processor), throw your cabbage chunks, onion, and garlic into the food processor equipped with the standard metal blade and process until everything is well minced/homogenous small pieces. Add to the large mixing bowl. If you don’t own a food processor or a blender, you can use a cheese grater to quickly mince the cabbage and then mince the onion and garlic by hand.
- Add ground chicken, soy sauce, salt, sugar, sesame oil, and white pepper into the bowl.
- Mix very well- we usually use a food-safe glove and get in there with our hand(s).
Assembly:
- Set up your station (for us, that’s our dining table) with your wrappers, filling, spoons, a tray to set the wrapped dumplings on, and small bowls of water- you will need water to seal the dumplings.
- There’s no better way to learn how to wrap dumplings than to watch videos- here’s a simple, easy to follow one to start your rabbit hole of dumpling folds and shapes.
Tips:
- Start with a large teaspoon of filling to make sure you have enough wrapper room to learn how to fold. You can gradually increase the amount of filling as you get more comfortable.
- Err towards more water than less when wetting the edge of the wrapper to make sure your dumplings are sealed.
Cooking:
- My preferred method is by boiling them; it’s hands off, easy, ensures they are cooked, and less oil overall if you know you’re going to consume more than a handful.
- Bring a pot of water to boil, toss in your dumplings, then cook until they start to float, then wait an additional 3-5 minutes before taking them out. I always take one out first and cut it open to make sure the filling is cooked.
- Pan fry:
- Heat up oil in a saucepan on medium- low for a few minutes. Add your dumplings and cover with a lid for 3-4 minutes. Once they have a nice crust on the bottoms, carefully add in hot water and quickly put the lid back on to let them steam up and finish cooking. This is a tricker process and requires a lot of instinct since cooking times will vary depending on your pan, stove, and dumplings, so I recommend this method to people who are already familiar with pan frying dumplings.
- Steam:
- Set up your steamer arrangement and steam for 8-10 minutes. As always, check one dumpling first to make sure it’s cooked.
Storing:
You’ve probably noticed this recipe calls for a substantial amount of ingredients- that’s because we’ve found that this amount of filling can fill just about one entire pack of wrappers so that we’re not in the sticky situation of either too many wrappers or too much filling.
Since this proportion can easily make two full sheet trays of dumplings, we usually freeze them and keep them frozen until we want to eat them.
To do that, we place our wrapped dumplings (still uncooked) on a wire rack set on a baking sheet. Once the sheet is full of dumplings (make sure they’re not too crowded or touching each other too much), we place the entire tray in the freezer and let the dumplings freeze. After an hour, they are usually hard and dry enough to be placed into a plastic bag for storing. Then, when we want to eat them, we take them straight from the freezer and (usually) straight into a pot of boiling water.
If you do not freeze them individually first before putting them into a bag or container, the moisture from the wrappers will come out and make things very weird, sticky, and gooey before all the dumplings will just stick together in one giant frozen clump. If you cook this giant clump, you will likely rip off a lot of pieces of wrapper and the filling will probably start leaking.
Dipping Sauce (recipe courtesy of Eric’s dad):
- 2 parts sugar
- 2 parts cooking wine (we use a white chinese cooking wine)
- 2 parts oyster sauce
- 4 parts white vinegar
- 4 parts soy sauce
- Minced garlic
- Black pepper
- Thinly sliced green onion
- Splash of sesame oil
(Parts = unit, which could be a tablespoon or a 1/4 cup or a full 1 cup depending on how much sauce you want to make)
Hang Tran 