I love me some appetizers. So much so, I could make a meal out of them regularly. And that's just we did last night. I'm a big fan of copycat recipes. You know, your favorite foods from restaurants, but cooked at home. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Let me tell you, last night it worked and I'm so excited to have been able to have found this recipe on the first attempt. They were fun and easy to make. Even Audrey, my 7-year-old, enjoyed helping me out.
I often browse this website called Foodgawker. It's a page full of pictures of food and if you click on a picture it will go to the source of that picture, a blog where it almost always give the recipe. So, anyway, cruising Foodgawker and saw a recipe for dumplings, as in Chinese Dumplings and decided I was going to attempt this. I did a search option and brought up all of the recipes for this dish, choosing the most 'hearted'. I figure if everyone else seems to like it then it should be good. I was directed to the food blog First Look, Then Cook. I'm SO saving this website because these turned out amazing, tasted just like my local Chinese food restaurant's dumplings. Yum!
Below are a few pics of our process & the full recipe is at the bottom.
First gather up your ingredients. BTW, I could not find the wrappers at first and found that many grocery stores keep them in the organic section in the produce aisle. That is exactly where I found them at our local Kroger.
Next, grab a partner and start filling those suckers. Our won-tons were square-shaped so you add about 1/2 tablespoon of the meat mixture to the center of the dumpling. Have a small bowl with water at your ready. Dip your finger in the water & slide along the edge before folding the square into a triangle. We pinched ours out to look more like a dumpling:
We took a large cookie sheet, added parchment paper so they would not stick, and laid them out as we made these cute little bundles:
Next, steam them. There are a few ways you can do this. Corey decided that since there were so many of them we needed a bigger surface then our normal collapsible steamer basket like this, but this will work:
Instead, he took our griddle, added lots of water, a small cookie sheet with a cookie rack resting on the edges and viola, we had ourselves a super steamer. We were able to do them in 2 batches at 12 minutes a piece:
Corey whipped up some fried rice with lots of veggies and here ya go. This was our dinner:
Like I said, they dumplings turned out amazing, and the kids could not get enough!
Chinese Dumplings
ingredients:
dumplings:
- 1 garlic clove
- 1 lb of ground pork
- 1/2 can water sliced chestnuts
- 1 tablespoon ginger
- 1 egg white
- 2 tablespoons rice wine
- 1 tablespoon corn starch
- 1/2 teaspoon sugar
- 2-3 tablespoons soy sauce
- 4 tablespoons minced scallions
- 2 tablespoons sesame oil
- 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
- 2-4 tablespoons cilantro
- 1 package dumpling wrappers (we used won-ton wrappers)
sauce:
- soy sauce
- rice wine
- scallions
- ginger
Start food processor and add garlic while running. Add the rest of the ingredients and run processor until well-blended. Place 1/2 tablespoon into the dumpling wrapper. Dip finger in water and trace over half of wrapper. Fold wrapper together and make sure it is sealed. At this point, the dumplings may be frozen or cooked immediately. When ready to cook, layer steamer with cabbage leaves or parchment paper and place dumplings in a single layer onto paper/leaves and cook 20 minutes if frozen, or 12 minutes for fresh.
For sauce add equal parts soy sauce and rice wine. Then add minced scallions and grated ginger to your liking.
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