rice again

Just in time for Chinese New Year here’s my recipe for Chinese boiled dumplings or Jiaozi. Ofcourse this recipe can be adapted for fried or steamed dumplings, but I’ll try to explain in laymans terms how I’ve been taught by numerous real life Chinese people.

Ingredients:

Dumpling “Skins” brought from any asian supermarket refrigerated section. If in Asia you can buy homemade ones from the local wet market.

Filling Ingredients:

Pork Mince
Spring Onions
Corriander
Dried Shitake Mushrooms
Chicken Stock Powder
Egg whites
Sesame oil
Bai Jiu or Brandy
Salt/MSG
White Pepper powder
Soy Sauce

1. Wash hands, (you’ll need them later)
2. 45 Minutes before, put the dried mushrooms in a generous bowl of warm water and leave to sit while they soften.
3. Finely chop the spring onions, coriander and mushrooms. Chop as finely as you can so that its easy to mix through the pork, the flavours diffuse and the bits don’t prevent the pork from bonding.
4. Put your pork into a large mixing bowl. I use my dirty old Wok as it allows easy access for the hand mushing to come. (Hand mushing is a technical chefs term, write it down)
5. Mix Through your Finely chopped vegetables one lot at a time being careful to get them all through the pork without over saturating it so that it doesnt stick together well.
6. Add a splash of alcohol salt, pepper, soy sauce, sesame oil and chicken stock powder to taste, don’t be shy. Mush with both hands. To taste doesn’t mean eating raw pork, if Chinese people did this the population would be significantly smaller and China wouldn’t be the jugernaught it is today. Try frying a little in a pan before you taste it if you are not confident in your culinary third sense.
7. Add an egg white to help with bonding. More mushing. Add, maybe a teaspoon of flour, more if your mix is extra sloppy.
8. After much mushing you have your filling.

Filling your dumplings

1. This is a contentious issue but above all if they taste good people won’t really care how they look, but let’s face it looks are important. The easiest way to fold a dumpling and the less time consuming when you have 150 dumpling skins to fill is as follows:
2. Wet the edges of the skin with a little water using a finger from your free hand. This will help the skin stick and negate any residual flour trying to mess up your game.
3. Put a small dollop (or clump in laymans terms) of filling in the middle of the skin. and fold the skin to close.
4. Now here’s the hard part. Hold the skin in your hand as if you are giving a speech and reading from a cue card. (palm facing up and thumb pointing away), lay your other hand underneath in the same posture. You will find that by bringing your thumb tips together in an upsidedown “V” shape you are able to press down on the seams of the dumpling sealing it into a cresent shape.

Cooking

1. Bring a large pot of water to the boil.
2. Add dumplings to the water in small lots so they don’t stick together. The water will stop boiling. Bring back to a boil.
3. Remove a cup of boiling water and replace with cold water. Bring back to a boil.
4. Repeat two more times and you are done.