Pork Dumplings

The Chinese New Year is coming up and that gives me the perfect excuse to make one of my favorite Asian dishes of all time: pork dumplings. While these can be a bit time consuming to make (think about it, each one needs to be individually made), it is totally worth the effort. The homemade ones just hit different! With some guidance and a little practice, you’ll be making these like it’s nothing.

Dumpling wrappers

There are two things you could do for the dumpling wrappers:

1. Buy store bought ones from any Asian market (I’ve done this before and they work perfectly fine).
2. Make your own homemade ones (my preferred method).

Since I am sharing a recipe with this post, I’m going to walk you through making the homemade ones. All that you’ll need is flour, boiling water, and salt. Mix all of the ingredients together and knead the dough. Then, using a rolling pin or pasta roller (if you have a stand mixer, I recommend using the pasta roller attachment), roll the dough out into a thin rectangle. Using a circular cutter that’s about 3 1/2 inches diameter, cut your wrappers. You will definitely have scrap dough leftover and you can absolutely re-use it to make more wrappers. Lay the wrappers out and we’re ready to fill them.

Dumpling fillings

The dumpling filling is the real star of the recipe. You’ll need the following ingredients:

• Ground pork
• Cabbage
• Scallions
• Chives
• Garlic
• Ginger
• Shaoxing wine (I use this one off of Amazon and it works great)
• Soy sauce

All that you need to do is mix all of the ingredients together and we’re ready to fill the dumplings.

Fill the dumplings

Throughout the years, I’ve attempted a few different ways to go about filling (and folding) dumplings. I’ve tried filling and folding – start to finish – one by one but found this method to be more time consuming. Instead, I will lay out all of the dumpling wrappers, fill them all with the pork mixture, and then fold them all. This method gets me in a rhythm and I crank through them. Give it a try and see what works best for you. I do not measure out the amount of pork mixture I put in each wrapper. When you go to fold them, you’ll know if it’s too much or too little and can adjust. If I had to give a guideline, I’d say 1-2 tablespoons go into each wrapper.

Folding the dumplings

With the dumpling wrappers laid out and filled with the pork mixture, it’s time to fold them all. This part is admittedly time consuming and tedious but can be fun once you get going. It’s also really good for your motor skills. The folding process is as follows:

1. Dip your finger in some water and brush the edges of the wrapper (to help seal them)
2. Fold the wrapper into a taco shape and press the center point to seal. The two ends will still be open.
3. Starting with the left center side, use your index fingers to fold the top portion of the dumpling towards the center point that you sealed. Pinch that down. Continue working away from the center point, repeat this folding/pinching down two more times so that you have three folds on the left side. Repeat the exact same steps on the right side.

The folding process definitely takes some practice to get used to. Do not expect your first few to be perfect but you will get better as you do them. I actually like it when they don’t come out flawless. In my opinion, this gives it the “homemade” feel to it vs made in a factory. Bottom line is don’t fret if your folds don’t come out perfect.

Steam the dumplings

Now it’s the easy part: steam the dumplings. Using a bamboo steamer, add as many dumplings as you can without having them touch each other. Steam for 9 minutes and enjoy! I like to have my dumplings with a homemade dipping sauce that consists of soy sauce, rice vinegar, sesame oil, and crushed red pepper (if you like a kick).

NOTE: if you don’t have a bamboo steamer, you can do the following. Add the dumplings to a pan over medium heat. Cook the dumplings until the bottoms start to brown. Then add ~1/4 cup of water and cover the pan, allowing to steam for 5 minutes.

Enjoy your hard earned dumplings!

These dumplings are definitely going to take some time to make. In my opinion, they are perfect to make on an open weekend afternoon. Bonus tip: you can actually make these dumplings all the way up to the point where where they have been folded and freeze them! Just lay them out on a tray and freeze them for ~1 hour and then you can add them all to a ziploc bag and freeze until you’re ready to eat them. No need to defrost them either – just cook them the same way you would if they were fresh. Enjoy this recipe guys. We never have leftovers of these in our house and I think you will like them just as much.