We are wrapping up this “got cabbage?” series with food in honor of Lunar New Year: dumplings. I have only tried making dumplings once before today, and it was quite a challenge and can be time-consuming especially when you make them by yourself.
Dumplings are made in 3 stages: wrappers, filling, and assembly. I guess 4 if you count cooking the dumplings. For the wrappers, I saw a recipe that said to combine about a 2:1 ratio of flour to warm water, but found it to be too sticky and needing more flour. I also used hot water instead because the first batch I made did not form properly, and it seemed to work better. In the end, I probably used approximately 1 1/4 cups of all-purpose flour and 1/2 cup of hot water.
Directions for making dumpling wrappers:
- Mix together the flour and hot water to form a shaggy dough.
- Knead it until smooth and “springy” (if you press your thumb into it, the dough should spring back to its original shape).
- Cover the dough ball in plastic wrap and rest for 30 minutes.
- Cut the dough into 4 pieces.
- Dust each piece with flour and roll it out until very thin (not too thin that you can see your hand through the dough).
- Using an object with a circular shape (e.g., mason jar top, jar top, top of a drinking glass), cut out circles.
When I first attempted to make dumplings, I made my wrappers too thick which made them very unappealing to eat, so I made sure to make them nice and thin this time. Just remember, wrappers dry out, so try to use them soon after making them.
For the filling, I used a recipe from Tiffy Cooks, but used ground pork instead of chicken thighs because that was the protein I had on hand. Of course, my main reason for using her recipe was because it features half a head of cabbage! She has you salt the cabbage, massage it, and then squeeze out the water. It was quite interesting and fun to massage the chopped cabbage and feeling it wilt and become softer in my hands. I keep seeing shaoxing wine as an ingredient in dumpling filling, so I added a dash of it to my filling as well. I love the tip that Tiffy Cooks gives, to microwave a bit of dumpling filling so you can taste it before assembly. If you are interested in learning ways to cook dumplings, she has some helpful directions on her post. I ended up half-frying, half-steaming mine. She also talks about dipping sauce, for which she used black vinegar and chili oil which is what I’ve commonly seen for dumplings, so I did something similar by taking black vinegar and my favorite crunchy garlic chili oil.
One tip to keep in mind is that you should try to cook your dumplings and not let them sit for too long because the filling will make the wrapper moist. This is also where you can freeze them immediately after assembly to prevent them from getting to that stage and then cook them when you’re ready. All in all, dumplings can be a bit finicky because you have to time them just right, but they can be fun to make with family or friends, or even by yourself like I did.
