Making Chinese Dumplings with Jen

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See an updated version with a recipe for shrimp dumplings on my blog here.

When I was a kid, I used to sit by the kitchen table on Sunday evenings watching my parents and my grandmother make Chinese dumplings. My father would roll out the wrappers quickly and skillfully while my mom and grandmother folded the dough and filling into beautiful, delicate dumplings - ready for boiling or frying. I never learned to make dumplings until I was in college. I wanted to make them to celebrate the Chinese New Year, so I called my grandmother for the ingredients. I didn't need instructions on how to mix the dough, roll the wrappers or fold the dumplings because it was such a vivid image from my childhood. Ever since then, I've made my own dumplings from scratch. The action of the rolling pin reminds me of my dad. When I pinch the wrappers closed, I can see my mother and grandmother chatting away while they place one dumpling after another in a neat pattern on the large platter.

My good friend, Claire Burns, is an avid cook like I am. I promised to teach her how to make dumplings a while ago and since she and Matt were leaving Cornell - it was time to make good on my promise. I invited Claire, Sande and Amy over for a "cooking lesson" and girl gab session to boot. We had a lot of fun and made over 150 dumplings! Claire took most of the digital photos to document the demonstration. I hope you learn something and have as good a time as we did.

Ingredients

Dough
2 cups flour (all purpose)
1/2-3/4 cup water

Filling
1 lb. ground pork
1/3 cup bamboo shoots, minced
1/3 cup chinese black mushrooms, rehydrated, cleaned, squeezed, minced
1/3 cup green onions, minced
1/4 cup ginger root, peeled and minced
1/2 cup napa cabbage, minced
1 tbsp dark soy sauce
1 tsp sesame oil

Dipping Sauce
3 parts soy sauce
2 parts vinegar
1 part sesame oil
green onions (optional)
ginger root (optional)
garlic (optional)
chili paste (optional)
sugar (optional)

Notes on ingredients

It's really up to you what you decide to put in the filling. My mom likes to use ginger, green onions and napa cabbage. She also has another great filling made with shrimp meat, water chestnuts and ginger root - it's awesome. Put more or less of what you like according to your preferences.

Making the dough

My mom puts the flour in a large pot, pours in water a little at a time and stirs with chopsticks until the dough begins to pull away from the walls of the pot. Then she kneads the dough about 20 strokes until the texture is smooth and silky - not sticky but not flaky either. I have found that my results are too inconsistent with this method. I get excellent results when I use a Cuisinart with the dough blade.

	Place 2 cups of flour in the Cuisinart fitted with the dough blade. Turn on the processor and gradually pour in 1/2 cup of water through the top opening until small beads of dough move along the side of the workbowl. Pour contents into a large mixing bowl.
	Knead the dough 20 strokes or until all of the loose flour is incorporated into the dough.
	Form the dough into a neat round dome and place at bottom of the mixing bowl. Place a clean damp cloth or damp paper towel on top of the dough and let sit for 15 minutes.

Preparing the filling
This part requires the most time and I would recommend doing it before the dough. You could conceivably use a food processor to chop the vegetables, but I find that hand chopping gives me better control on desired size and uniformity. I love my Cuisinart, but many of these ingredients tend to puree and leave large chunks at the same time.

These are the ingredients: the ground pork, napa cabbage, black mushrooms, green onions, bamboo shoots and ginger root. I bought 3 pounds of ground pork since we were planning to make a lot of dumplings. So all of the quantities have been tripled (more or less). The brown things in the middle of the pork are two chopsticks for mixing. There is a lot of ginger because all four of us love the stuff.

Empty all of the ingredients into a large bowl with the ground pork. Begin mixing the filling.

Now I think you are supposed to use chopsticks or a spoon to mix all of the filling ingredients together which is why we took this photo. Of course, after the photo, I rolled up my sleeves and mixed the filling with my hand. I poured in the soy sauce and the sesame oil (which smells fantastic) and mixed thoroughly. I prefer to use dark soy sauce for this filling because it is stronger.

Rolling the dumpling wrappers

You should have a clean well-floured surface, plain rolling pin and knife ready. Remove the dough from bowl, reserving the damp paper towel or cloth.

Cut the dough into two pieces and place one half back in the bowl and cover with the damp towel. Cut the remaining half lengthwise into two strips of equal thickness.

Roll out each strip so the sides are rounded and tap the ends in to make a uniform rod shape.

Next, cut the strip into 3/4 inch chunks, rolling the strip 90 degrees after each cut to avoid flattening the cross section. Actually, if the strip is very thick, you will want to cut the chunks thinner, if the strip is thin, then cut the strip thicker. It should be about the size of a one tablespoon pat of butter cut from a 1/4 cup stick.

Take each chunk of dough and dust in flour while shaping the cross section into a circle.

Then gently flatten each chunk of dough with the palm of your hand into a chubby round patty the size of a silver dollar.

Use the rolling pin to roll a pat of dough to double its length.

Turn the dough 90 degrees and roll it out until you have a small flat circle.

Hold the dough circle at the top with one hand and with the other hand, use the rolling pin to roll out the bottom. Turn the dough and continue to roll the skin out to form a larger circle.

The wrapper should be palm-sized, uniform in thickness around the edges, slightly thicker in the middle, and circular.

Folding the dumplings

With the dumpling skin flat in one hand, place about a tablespoon of filling in the middle of the wrapper in an oblong lump. There should be enough margin left along the wrapper to close it without spilling the filling. However, be aware of underfilling too.

Fold the wrapper edges up into a taco shape and pinch the edges together at the top (middle) so that they are stuck together but without getting pork filling caught between.

Create a pleat just to the right (or left) of the center pinch as I am doing in the photo.

Flatten the pleat just next to the middle pinch point and squeeze the dough together. Continue doing this to the end of the dumpling. I usually have about 3 pleats from the middle to the end. At the end, you should have a small loop. Pinch the end of the loop in toward the center of the dumpling and squeeze together.

Return to the middle pinch point and make pleats on the same side but in the opposite direction.

At the end, pinch in the loop and squeeze the dough sealed. Go over the top edge to make sure everything is pinched securely.

Your dumpling should look similar to this one. It should be crescent shaped with pleats converging toward the top of the center of the dumpling. Now go finish making the rest.

Pan-frying to make pot stickers

You can make dumplings (jiao-tse) by boiling them in water or steaming them. I personally prefer pot stickers (kuo tieh) because I love the crunchy bottoms. Begin by pouring a tablespoon or more of vegetable oil (I do not recommend olive oil or sesame oil) into a frying pan or large non-stick pot.

Arrange the dumplings in the frying pan, making sure there is oil on the bottom of each dumpling. Turn the heat on medium high to high.

You should begin to hear some sizzling. Monitor the color of the dumpling bottoms to make sure they do not burn. Be careful not to burn yourself too! If oil spatters a lot, you can cover the pan as long as you watch that they do not burn. When the bottoms are a nice golden color, add 1/3 cup of water all at once.

The pan will sizzle. Cover the pan allowing a small opening for steam to escape. When the water level boils off by half of the volume, lower the heat to medium.

When the water boils off, uncover the pan and let the dumplings fry a minute longer and then remove from pan and serve.

Dipping sauce

The dipping sauce is pretty simple. Like the filling, there is a great deal of flexibility that depends on your personal preferences. The base sauce I grew up using has 3 parts soy sauce, 2 parts red wine vinegar and 1 part sesame oil.

Other ingredients to add include chili garlic paste, sugar, garlic, ginger root and green onions.

The rookies

Claire took to rolling dumpling wrappers right away - what a pro!

Amy masters the art of folding dumplings.

We didn't manage to take a picture of Sande in action, but I think she enjoyed herself thoroughly from the looks of her smile.

On the issue of freezing
Dumplings are a lot of work, so when I make them, I make a lot. I freeze them uncooked and cook them up in small batches. Here is the trick to freezing them. Set the dumplings on a cookie sheet - not touching one another. Set the sheet in a freezer until the dumplings can no longer be squashed without effort. Carefully place them in a sealable freezer bag until you are ready to cook them. Go about cooking in the same way except it will probably require a little more time (use more water and let cook longer).

	Empty all of the ingredients into a large bowl with the ground pork. Begin mixing the filling.
	Now I think you are supposed to use chopsticks or a spoon to mix all of the filling ingredients together which is why we took this photo. Of course, after the photo, I rolled up my sleeves and mixed the filling with my hand. I poured in the soy sauce and the sesame oil (which smells fantastic) and mixed thoroughly. I prefer to use dark soy sauce for this filling because it is stronger.

	You should have a clean well-floured surface, plain rolling pin and knife ready. Remove the dough from bowl, reserving the damp paper towel or cloth.
	Cut the dough into two pieces and place one half back in the bowl and cover with the damp towel. Cut the remaining half lengthwise into two strips of equal thickness.
	Roll out each strip so the sides are rounded and tap the ends in to make a uniform rod shape.
	Next, cut the strip into 3/4 inch chunks, rolling the strip 90 degrees after each cut to avoid flattening the cross section. Actually, if the strip is very thick, you will want to cut the chunks thinner, if the strip is thin, then cut the strip thicker. It should be about the size of a one tablespoon pat of butter cut from a 1/4 cup stick.
	Take each chunk of dough and dust in flour while shaping the cross section into a circle.
	Then gently flatten each chunk of dough with the palm of your hand into a chubby round patty the size of a silver dollar.
	Use the rolling pin to roll a pat of dough to double its length.
	Turn the dough 90 degrees and roll it out until you have a small flat circle.
	Hold the dough circle at the top with one hand and with the other hand, use the rolling pin to roll out the bottom. Turn the dough and continue to roll the skin out to form a larger circle.
	The wrapper should be palm-sized, uniform in thickness around the edges, slightly thicker in the middle, and circular.

	With the dumpling skin flat in one hand, place about a tablespoon of filling in the middle of the wrapper in an oblong lump. There should be enough margin left along the wrapper to close it without spilling the filling. However, be aware of underfilling too.
	Fold the wrapper edges up into a taco shape and pinch the edges together at the top (middle) so that they are stuck together but without getting pork filling caught between.
	Create a pleat just to the right (or left) of the center pinch as I am doing in the photo.
	Flatten the pleat just next to the middle pinch point and squeeze the dough together. Continue doing this to the end of the dumpling. I usually have about 3 pleats from the middle to the end. At the end, you should have a small loop. Pinch the end of the loop in toward the center of the dumpling and squeeze together.
	Return to the middle pinch point and make pleats on the same side but in the opposite direction.
	At the end, pinch in the loop and squeeze the dough sealed. Go over the top edge to make sure everything is pinched securely.
	Your dumpling should look similar to this one. It should be crescent shaped with pleats converging toward the top of the center of the dumpling. Now go finish making the rest.

	You can make dumplings (jiao-tse) by boiling them in water or steaming them. I personally prefer pot stickers (kuo tieh) because I love the crunchy bottoms. Begin by pouring a tablespoon or more of vegetable oil (I do not recommend olive oil or sesame oil) into a frying pan or large non-stick pot.
	Arrange the dumplings in the frying pan, making sure there is oil on the bottom of each dumpling. Turn the heat on medium high to high.
	You should begin to hear some sizzling. Monitor the color of the dumpling bottoms to make sure they do not burn. Be careful not to burn yourself too! If oil spatters a lot, you can cover the pan as long as you watch that they do not burn. When the bottoms are a nice golden color, add 1/3 cup of water all at once.
	The pan will sizzle. Cover the pan allowing a small opening for steam to escape. When the water level boils off by half of the volume, lower the heat to medium.
	When the water boils off, uncover the pan and let the dumplings fry a minute longer and then remove from pan and serve.

	The dipping sauce is pretty simple. Like the filling, there is a great deal of flexibility that depends on your personal preferences. The base sauce I grew up using has 3 parts soy sauce, 2 parts red wine vinegar and 1 part sesame oil.
	Other ingredients to add include chili garlic paste, sugar, garlic, ginger root and green onions.

	Claire took to rolling dumpling wrappers right away - what a pro!
	Amy masters the art of folding dumplings.
	We didn't manage to take a picture of Sande in action, but I think she enjoyed herself thoroughly from the looks of her smile.