Homemade dumplings, it might sound like a lot of work. These are super easy however and all the ingredients, except for the jiaozi wrappers, can be found in the supermarket.
- Ingredients for 25 dumplings:
- 250 gr / 0.5 lbs minced pork or pork sausage meat
- 3-4 leaves of napa cabbage thinly sliced
- 1 ts fresh ginger grated or chopped
- 2-3 cloves of garlic
- Few drops of sesame oil
- A pinch of chili flakes
- 1 green onion
- Flavorless oil for stir frying
- 25 jiaozi wrappers, remove from the freezer in time
- A bit of water for closing the wrappers
Remove the jiaozi wrappers from the freezer in time. The packaging will say for how long.
Wash the napa cabbage, slice thinly and stir fry in a bit of oil. Clean the garlic and ginger, chop finely and add to the cabbage. Wilt the cabbage down until most of the moisture has evaporated. Leave to cool.
Minced pork isn’t easy for me to find so often I use pork sausage meat instead.
Finely chop the green onion, add the meat and the cold cabbage. Season with sesame oil and chili flakes. You don’t need to make it too spicy, the flakes are for adding a bit of warmth.
Jiaozi wrappers are small white discs ideal for steaming. The package I used contained 25 wrappers. You can find them at the freezer section of Asian grocery stores. Don’t buy the square yellow ones.
Take a jiaozi wrapper and put a bit of filling in the center. Leave enough room to close them without the filling coming out. Moisten half of the edge with a bit of water and fold it over. Press from the center of the edge to the outside and try not to capture air into the dumpling.
My filling was enough for exactly 25 wrappers. You can stuff the jiaozi beforehand and store them covered in the refrigerator. Make sure they don’t touch in case of sticking.
Put the dumplings, without touching each other, in a steamer or steamer basket on top of some baking parchment and steam for 20 to 25 minutes. Don’t let the parchment cover all the steam holes, so enough steam goes around the dumplings. Test a dumpling to check if the filling is completely cooked.
- Dip:
- Soy sauce
- Sesame oil
- 1 green onion
- Toasted sesame seeds
Mix a couple of tablespoons of soy sauce and season with a few drops of sesame oil, chopped green onion and some toasted sesame seeds. You could also add a chopped clove of garlic.
We had the dumplings simply on top of some steamed rice, but they would also be perfect with noodle soup.
A very successful experiment. I had never used these wrappers before, but will definitely be making these again.
