Online dumpling workshop by kinakål.no for SUM, mars 2021.
饺子 – jiaozi, chinese dumplings, is a chinese staple eaten all over china. Its a kind of slow fast-food; quite time consuming to make, but super-quick to prepare.
The verb used to make dumplings in chinese is 包 [bāo]. It means to wrap or to cover. This sign is is also used as a root in other characters meaning to hug, or eat full, and when chinese families cram together for new year, which might be the only time during a year when parents meet children, it's all about wrapping up, being together and eating, and, in many parts of china, making dumplings.
China is big, and when it comes to dumplings, there are lots of regional varieties. The kind of dumplings we will make here today are native to north-east china, and they are called 水饺 [shui jiao] (literally water-dumplings) in chinese. We first use plain wheat flour to make the dough. We will then make the stuffing, either meat and chinese cabbage, or tofu and chinese cabbage - you will chose to make one of the two stuffings, and shop accordingly. Next step will be to roll out thin, circular wrappers that we fill with stuffing, wrap, seal and close, cook in boiling water, fish out and eat.
设备 Before we start, be kind to have the following available
-Measuring cup, or even better, a digital kitchen scales
-A sieve, a couple of mixing bowls
-A good knife, a chopping board
-A clean work surface, a clean kitchen towel
-For those who make vegan dumplings, a frying pan
-A not to small casserole >5 litres
-Rolling pin, preferably asian handle-free, but western style with handles will also do
-A pair of chopsticks, if you have. A batter scraper, if you have
-A strainer spoon, if you have
工作安排 Workflow
The dough needs to rest for ca. 20 minutes, so we will first make the dough, then proceed to make the stuffing while the dough rests. Those who make meat stuffing make meat stuffing, those who make vegan stuffing make vegan stuffing. Stuffing done, we will roll out wrappers from the dough, fill them with stuffing and wrap then up. Finally we will bring a casserole of water to boil, cook the dumplings and eat them. All in all this will take 2.5-3 hours. My goal is that each one of you manages to make 12 cookable dumplings. That is more than enough to fill one adult. The measures in this manual will in the best of all possible worlds make 20 dumplings. If you end up with more than you can possibly eat right away, just place them on a tray and put them in the freezer before you cook them. When deep-frozen, transfer from tray to a plastic bag. When you want to eat them, do not defrost, but bring directly from the freezer into a pot of boiling water, cook ca 6 minutes and they are done!
面团 Dumpling dough
For the dough, we will use fine all-purpose wheat flour, salt, and water. Ideally you will use 10g dough for each wrapper, and the 200g dough will ideally make 20 wrappers. If you you are more people working together, just scale up accordingly.
To make a 200g dough, you need:
135 g / 190 cl flour
70 g / 70 cl water
1.5 g / 0.5 tsp salt
做法 Method:
Measure flour, add salt and put in a mixing bowl, mix well. Add water slowly and work it into the flour. Use your hand and press and hammer together until you have a lump and all the dry stuff is bound. Now take it out of the bowl and knead it for about 10 minutes. Do not stop before you have a firm piece of dough with a smooth crack-free surface. Put it in a clean, semi-closed plastic bag and let it rest in a place not too cold.
饺子馅儿 Dumpling stuffing
When it comes to stuffing, the possibilities are endless. There are however some principles it is worth observing. It is important to
-get out as much water as possible of the vegetables you use
-chop everything finely and evenly
-mix it together thoroughly
-heavy on umami, light on salt
Again, ideally, each dumpling will use 15g stuffing. In order not to run short of stuffing before we have used up the dough, we will make ca 350g stuffing.
牛肉白菜馅儿 Dumpling-stuffing with minced beef and Chinese cabbage
200g minced beef, not to meagre
¼ chinese cabbage (buy a whole, cut in two halves lengthwise, then in quarters. do not cut off the hard end where the stem was)
2 tsp salt
10g / 4tsp soy sauce
10 g / 4tsp neutral cooking oil
5g / 2tsp sesame-oil if you have, otherwise, substitute with neutral cooking oil
2 stalks spring onion
2 tsp ginger
1 pinch white pepper
做法 Method
#chop ¼ Chinese cabbage evenly and finely, put in a colander, knead in 2 tsp salt, leave to drain. place the colander in the sink or put something that can hold the water under it
#trim scallion, peel ginger, chop evenly and finely
#knead the water out of the Chinese cabbage
#in a mixing bowl, mix it all together. check salinity, if you want more salt add it now. remember you will dip the dumplings in soy sauce when you eat, so you they should not be to salty
牛肉白菜馅儿 Dumpling-stuffing with tofu og Chinese cabbage
200g firm tofu
¼ Chinese cabbage (buy a whole, cut in two halves lengthwise, then in quarters. do not cut off the hard end where the stem was)
2 tsp salt
10g / 4tsp soy sauce
10 g / 4tsp neutral cooking oil
5g / 2tsp sesame-oil if you have, otherwise, substitute with neutral cooking oil
2 stalks spring onion
2 tsp ginger
1 pinch white pepper
做法 Method
#chop ¼ Chinese cabbage evenly and finely, put in a colander, knead in 2 tsp salt, leave to drain. place the colander in the sink, or put something that can hold the water under it
#cut tofu in evenly sized 1x1 cm cubes . bring your frying pan to medium heat, add oil, add tofu cubes. move them around in the pan and fry until all surfaces are golden. go easy, take care not to develop a hard crust
#trim scallion, peel ginger, chop evenly and finely
#knead the water out of the chinese cabbage
#put it all in a in a mixing bowl, use your hand to crush the tofu cubes and mix it all very well together. check salinity, if you want more salt add it now. remember you will dip the dumplings in soy sauce when you eat, so they should not be to salty
擀皮 Rolling out dumpling wrappers
#let the dough out of the plastic bag. give it a knead. cut in two, put one part back in the plastic bag. roll out a 1.5 cm wide sausage. cut it in ca 1.5 cm – 10g - pieces. if you have a digital scales at hand, use it. flip all the pieces 90 degrees, press them flat with the back of your hand, you will then have ca 5 cm wide round thickish medallions. the more evenly round they are at this point, the easier it will be to roll out nice and round wrappers. dust with flour, toss them around a bit so all surfaces have a thin coating of flour. now use the roller pin to roll out nice and evenly round wrappers, ca 8 cm wide. I suggest this method: first, applying force, roll over once, you will then have an oval shaped form, rotate 9o degrees and roll over once again, also with some force. now you have something close to circular. then do a round of rolling towards the centre applying force, release the force and return the pin to where you started, rotate the wrapper 10 degrees, repeat, repeat, repeat until you have worked your way all the way around. no need to lift the hand working the pin during the process, similarly, the other hand should stay with the wrapper all the way round. confused? it will all get crystal clear when we go hands-on!
包饺子 Wrapping dumplings
#place the wrapper in your palm, take a teaspoon of stuffing and put it directly in the centre of the wrapper. fold it around the stuffing (lake a taco) and pinch together on the top. still pinching it with between your thumb and your index, use your other hand to pinch-close one of the two sides. push the edge on middle of the other side up towards the top where you still have your thumb and index and pinch-close here as well. pinch-close the two remaining openings. you do now have a Y-shaped, sealed dumpling. now, grab one of the two short legs of the Y and drag it back to the the top edge and pinch it in. at last, working from the top towards the sides, use two hands, thumbs and index to tighten the pinched edges as you and bend it slightly resulting in a crescent shaped form.
烹法 Cooking
#the dumplings we just have made can be steamed, pan-fried or boiled. for practical reasons, we will limit ourselves to boiling today. do like this: fill a large casserole 2/3 full with water and bring to boil. carefully drop the dumplings in the boiling water. leave to simmer for ca. 5 min. don't let the water hard-boil, it can damage your dumplings, try to keep it just close to boiling all the time. use the strainer spoon, if you have, or another suitable tool to fish out the cooked dumplings, which moreover should be floating at the surface of the water by now. place on a plate. make a dip of soy sauce, black chinese vinegar, if you have, and if you like it hot, chilli-oil. eat and enjoy!
饺子就酒越吃越有!
