I will warn that this process does take some time and patience the first couple of times you do it, but it's utterly worth it in the end when you're shoveling them down your throat. And I have to say, seeing them bobbing around the boiling water, then sliding into the bowl, just like I used to see them do in China and Taiwan, makes me wanna piss myself with joy.
These are cabbage jiaozi that I made, but don't forget you could substitute that with any meat you like or whatever filling you like!
My friend and her Tibetan fella were making cheese and broccoli dumplings, another friend has them as a sweet and stuffs them with chocolate then pours cream all over them! So do with this recipe as you fancy.
Ok, here goes...
Ingredients
For the dough
- 3 cups all purpose flour
- up to 1 1/4 cups of water
- 1/4 teaspoon of salt
For the filling
- a chunk of cabbage
- 1/4 of an onion
- 3 garlic cloves
- ginger to taste
- salt & pepper to taste
- 1 tbl spoon Hoi Sin sauce
- 1 tbl spoon rice wine vinegar (or balsamic or red sherry vin. works fine)
- 1 tspn of soy sauce
The dipping sauce
- soy sauce
- Hoi Sin sauce
- chili oil
- sesame oil
- rice wine vinegar
- garlic
- ginger
Method to my ways!
Ok, so first off make the dough. Put the flour and salt in a big mixing bowl, or whatever you've got. SLOWLY stir in the water. Try one cup first, maybe you'll need a little more, but don't exceed 1 1/4 cups as the dough will be too sticky.
As you're stirring (I do mine by hand, don't have a mixer) it should look something like this:
When you've finished stirring, flour the work surface well where you'll be kneading it. Gather the mix in your hands and shape it into a kind of circle. Then place it on the floured surface and knead it until it's smooth. Something like this:
As you can see, mine wasn't entirely 'smooth', but I was hungry and wanted to get on with it. My point is, don't stress about any of it. It's piss easy.
Ok, so place a cloth over the bowl and set it aside.
Now to make the filling.
Cut off a chunk of cabbage. I'd say just less than a quarter of one. You don't need too much filling as the amount you can put in each dumpling is very little.
Cut the cabbage into think slices, turn it sideways and cut across, making small teeny tiny pieces. You want the filling to be chopped as finely as you can tolerate standing there chopping for!
Do the same with the garlic, onion and ginger. Throw it all in the bowl. Mix in the Hoi Sin sauce, soy sauce, vinegar, salt and pepper. Give it a good stir. It should look something like this:
(Told you my photos weren't pretty! HA!)
Right, so now take the dough. Put it on a floured surface and make a rectangle with it, about an inch and a half thick I suppose. Then cut it into about 5 pieces.
Put four pieces aside and roll out one of them to make a big circle. This bit's quite annoying, cos you want the dough to be as thin as you can be arsed to make it. It pays if it's really thin though, the jiaozi taste so much less floury and doughy and more authentically thin and lush. But if you're planning on frying them, you can afford to make them a little thicker if you wish.
Then take a small glass of something with a circle on it that can cut into the dough. Not too big!!! Just about the size of the palm of your hand, no bigger! Like this:
Cut out the circles and put them in a floured pile:
Now you should start feeling like a proper old Chinese lady or man and are getting excited about stuffing them.
After you've finished cutting out as many circles as you can bear, take the mixture you made for the filling. Take just less than half a tea spoon, place it in the middle of a disc. Pinch the middle two ends of the dumpling, then pinch the left edge, then the right. Then continue to pinch it so it's properly sealed. I couldn't take photos of that cos it takes two hands. Sorry. But here's what they look like after the stuffing!
Now you have jiaozi!
To boil cook them simply boil up a big saucepan of water, drop them in gently one at a time. Boil them for about 4 mins, or until they're bobbing on the surface!
To shallow fry them (I learnt this in Taiwan) heat a frying pan or wok up on a high heat. Pour in some oil, not too much (vegetable oil or sesame oil) gently drop the dumplings in and hear them ssssizzle. Let them sit there for a minute, then pour in 1/4 a cup of water. Put the lid on. Cook for about 5 mins bringing them down to a medium heat until water evaporates & dumplings are nicely browned underneath. This way they crisp on the underside and steam on top. It's VERY yummy!
Or you could just drop them in a deep fat fryer I guess?!
For the dip you can use whatever you like. Personally I like a spicy tangy sauce, so I put soy sauce, Hoi Sin sauce, rice wine vinegar (or lime), chopped garlic, chopped ginger, a dash of sesame oil and a lot of chili oil in a small bowl.
Alternatively you can use Sriracha hot chili sauce with some soy sauce. I do that when I don't have the other ingredients.
Well, I hope you have a go at making these soon! It's fun to do alone, but also I like getting my friends involved. Kind of like a Jiaozi Making Train.
Either way get yer chopsticks out and enjoy!
(This recipe was adapted from worldfoodieguide)
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