As promised, I will share my home made dumplings recipe. I thought it would be fun to draw all the steps. So here it is! This recipe is for about 4 persons. I have to warn you beforehand, the measurements might be a little off, because I never measure the ingredients. I will try to describe the best I can, so you can get the right feeling. But cooking is about being creative, so just go with the flow..
Ingredients
Making dough:
- 750 gram flour
- 250ml water (not sure about this amount)
Meat filling:
- 500 gram minced meat
- 5-7 Chinese cabbage leafs
- 3-5 spring onions
- 1 small carrot (doesn’t really matter how much, it’s for the red color and sweetness)
- 1 teaspoon salt (or less..)
- 1 tablespoon sesame oil
- 1 tablespoon soy sauce (or more)
1. Prepping the dough
Put 750 gram flour in a bowl. Add little by little some water and mix with chopsticks or your hands. It will be sticky with your hands. When all the flour has become a solid thing and it should not be wet, then use your hands to make a solid piece of dough. You can also use a machine to do this. After the dough is firm. Set aside covered in plastic foil or in a closed pan. Leave it for about an hour.
2. Preparing the filling
Chop up the Chinese cabbage, green onion and carrot in small pieces. You can also use a food processor. Stir fry the spring onion shortly in oil to release a nice fragrant. Mix all the veggies with the minced meat. Add 1 teaspoon salt, 1 tablespoon sesame oil, some normal (sunflower/olive) oil and soy sauce. Mix again.
If you are daring enough, lick the meat and veggies to see whether it is salty enough. When you taste the salt, the filling is salty enough. Another trick is smelling very hard, if you can get the smell at the back of your nose, then it should have enough salt. Yes, who said cooking is easy.
3. Rolling the dough
After about 1 hour of letting the dough sit, you can cut the dough in 4 pieces. If the dough has become soft, you can massage it a few times to make it more hard. Hmm.. that sounds a bit naughty. Roll one piece of dough long and cut them in small pieces. Then you use a dough roller to flatten them into little pancakes.
(I realize now it is hard to see how to make the dough from the drawings. So next time when I will be making dumplings I will take some photos to put them here as size reference. Maybe someday I will make a video about how to make it. Or ask Youtube..)
4. Packing the dough
Finally you put the filling in the pancakes and fold them in half. Squeeze the sides, so there are no openings. Continue making pancakes and fold dumplings till all the filling is gone. If you have leftover dough, you can make noodles or a green onion oil pancake (葱油饼). If you have filling over, you can make soupballs or meat turnover (vleesflap) instead of an apple turnover (appelflap).
Put the dumplings in boiling water. Wait till it boils, add half a glass of water, wait till it boils again, add another half a glass of water. When it boils the third time, it should be done.
Serve the dumpling with Chinese vinegar (镇江香醋), sesame oil, soy sauce (if you want more salt taste) and spicy sauce (老干妈 is the best!).
Enjoy!
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