I love Chinese dumplings! I've helped make them in China for Chinese New Year and Chinese Valentine's Day(yes, there really is such a thing), but had never made them on my own until last month. It was a disaster. I put too much seasoning in them and cooked them too long. And they are not easy to make, so it was a big waste of time and food. This is without making the dough, I cheated and bought pre-made wonton wraps, not sure how many hours total they would take if I made the dough too. Now I know why we all helped out at Chinese New Year. Anyway, I decided to try again today. Mainly because I had wraps left that needed to be used up. Today went much better, not perfect, but better. I decided to make them as potstickers this time, fried on the bottom and steamed on top (last time I just boiled them).
So first I minced cabbage and carrots. It would have been awesome to have Chinese cabbage, but you just can't get that out here (Can you even get it in the States? I assume you can at an Asian market). Then I minced mushrooms (also not the Chinese kind) mainly because I needed to use them up. And finally, I minced the pork. Yes I minced the pork instead of buying ground pork, they usually do it by hand in China and I didn't have ground pork at home. Here is all three combined.
I added a few spices and seasonings and began to "fill" the wonton wrappers, fold, and pinch them along the top.
Then I cooked them. The first batch was in my wok which sticks pretty bad, you can imagine that potstickers in a pot that sticks is not a very good combo.
Pretty messy, the bottoms all stuck to the wok. They didn't taste too bad though, not as awesome as I was hoping, but not too bad. For the next batch, I used a nonstick skillet which worked much better.
Then I made dipping sauce with chopped up garlic cloves, soy sauce, a little sesame oil, black Chinese vinegar(which is awesome!), and a few crushed red pepper flakes. It was delicious, if I do say so myself!
Overall, not too bad and definitely better than last time. Don't think I'm going to be making dumplings all the time though, too much work! Maybe I'll just order them from the Chinese restaurant next time. :-)
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