Bring Your Family Together When You Make This Perfect, Celebratory Chinese Meal. (姥姥的饺子家的味道)

Dumplings, (饺子 Mandarin: jiǎozi) is a Chinese traditional dinner that are made during special occasions when family is brought together such as birthdays and Chinese New Year. Many families come together during these occasions and work together to wrap the dumplings. Once they are done, someone will boil the dumplings and they will then share a delicious meal together. Since this process takes lots of work, we separated the videos into 4 different parts.

Ingredients 食材用料 价钱:

• 7 Cups Flour (All Purpose will do) 875 克 面
• 3 1/4 cups of water 800 毫升 凉水
• 2 pounds ground pork 1 公斤 绞肉
• 3 Tbsp light soy sauce 45 毫升 生抽
• 1.5 Tbsp dark soy sauce 20 毫升 老抽
• 1 Tbsp chicken bouillon granules 15 毫升 鸡精
• 2 Tbsp oil 30 毫升 油
• 3 Cups Water 700 毫升 水
• 2 Heads of Cabbage 2 棵洋白菜
• 1 Head Napa Cabbage 1 棵大白菜
• 2 Tbsp Minced Ginger 30 毫升 剁碎姜
• 3 Stalks of Green Onion, minced 3 根葱, 剁碎
• 3 Tbsp salt (1.5 for Cabbage and 1.5 for Napa Cabbage) 45 毫升 盐

Full Video Tutorial in 4 Parts

Preparation 1: Making Dough:

1. Put the seven cups of flour in a large bowl. Gradually add the water until their is no dry flour in the bowl. Continue to mix the flour with your hands scraping off the dough from the sides of the pot and your hands until both are clean. Then kneed the dough a little longer until it is nice and smooth. The longer you kneed the better. You can also dip your hands in the water to help make the dough smoother while you kneed.
2. Set the dough aside covering it with a wet towel then with a lid for at least 30 minutes
3. While you have set the dough aside, make the filling (below)
4. Kneed the dough a little, then make a long rope with about 1 inch in diameter. Pull off about 2 inch sections of dough and then flatten them into circular disks making them very thin.

Preparation 2: Making the filling:

1. Combine the pork, soy sauces, chicken bouillon, oil, and mix together.
2. Add small amounts of water and continue to stir until the meat mixture is smooth and sticky.
3. Separate the cabbage leaves and parboil the cabbage for 2 minutes then rinse them off in cold water. Then mince the cabbage by first shredding it into strips and then chopping the strips finely.
4. Do not parboil the Napa cabbage. Wash the Napa cabbage clean and then mince the Napa cabbage in the same way you minced the cabbage. After mincing add salt to draw out the water.
5. Mince the ginger and green onion. Add it to the meat along with oil and mix together.
6. Place half of the meat mixture in a separate bowl for the Napa cabbage filling
7. Squeeze the cabbage to remove most of the water and add it to one bowl of meat. Add the salt and mix together well
8. Squeeze out the excess water of the Napa cabbage and add it to the other bowl of meat. Add salt and stir until combined.

Preparation 3: Wrapping Dumplings:

1. Take about 2 tablespoons of the meat filling and place them in the middle of a dumpling wrapper. Fold the wrapper over the meat and squeeze the middle together. Then squeeze the sides together with a crimping pattern to seal the meat inside the dough. Make sure there are no holes in the dough. When finished, the dumpling should look like a half moon.

Preparation 4: Cooking Dumplings – fried or boiled:

Pot Stickers – filled with Ground Pork and Cabbage

1. To make pot stickers, add one Tablespoon of Chinese vinegar to a bowl of water.
2. Add oil to a heated pan. Place the dumplings in one row and fry the bottom until crispy golden brown.
3. Add the bowl of water with vinegar to the dumplings and cover cooking/boiling the dumplings till the water is boiled off. Then turn out the pot stickers onto a plate fried side up.
4. Serve with your favorite sauce. One common sauce in China is to just dip them dumplings in Chinese vinegar. Another common sauce is to combine soy sauce, vinegar, and sesame oil.

Boiled Dumplings – filled with Ground Pork and Napa Cabbage

1. To make boiled dumplings, take a large pot and fill it half way with water. Heat it up until the water is boiling.
2. Place about 24 dumplings into the pot, stir the dumplings to keep them from sticking and cover the pot.
3. When the pot boils again, add 1/3 cup of water to cook down the boiling water, stir the pot to keep the dumplings from sticking and cover the pot again. Do this another 2 times when the water boils. On the third time, take the lid off and let the dumplings cook for about another minute.
4. Serve with your favorite sauce. One common sauce in China is to just dip them dumplings in Chinese vinegar. Another common sauce is to combine soy sauce, vinegar, and sesame oil.

Kitchen Items used in this recipe

Meat Cleaver	SENZER Gravity Electric Salt and Pepper Grinder Set