As you may or may not know, tomorrow (the 26th) is Chinese New Year. In light of that, Mike and I have been cooking up a storm. Last night we made sticky rice for a small New Years potluck and today we’re going to make rice packets and dumplings. I also need to whip up some sort of 年糕 (nian gao/lin gow) for one of my classes tomorrow.
Though nian gao and spring rolls are two of the more stereotypical new years food, I don’t have a good recipe for those right now. So instead I’ll share my very own jiao zi (dumplings) recipe.
饺子 (jiao zi)
Ingredients
- 1/2 kg (1 pound) ground meat (this can be any ground meat, my favourite is ground chicken, but I have done it with turkey, pork, tofu, tofu chicken, and tofu beef)
- 2 tbsp soya sauce
- 2 tsp brandy or sherry or rice vinegar
- 2 tsp sesame oil
- 1 tsp minced ginger
- 1 1/2 tbsp minced garlic
- 2 or 3 stalks of spring onion
- 1 1/4 cups of bok choy
Directions
- Make sure everything is chopped up reasonably finely
- Mix it all together
- Put a spoonful into a dumpling wrapper and fold. This part can be a little tricky, but what I do is hold it in my palm, wet the edges just a little with a bit of water, then fold the wrapper and pink it. I then sort of pleat the edges of the wrapper starting at the middle, going to one end and then going back to the middle and pleating the other side. I think this sounds more complicated than it is, but you can take a look at this picture.
- To cook, heat up a deep (non-stick) frying pan that has a lid
- Once it is hot, put in a bit of oil and as many dumplings as can fit without touching each other
- Fry until they’re just brown on the underside
- Pour in one cup of water that has had a “generous splash” of rice vinegar mixed in it
- Put the lid on the pan and cook for roughly 10 minutes. You may want to push them around just a tiny bit while they are cooking just to make sure they are not sticking, but that depends on the stickiness of your frying pan.
- I like to eat my dumplings with a sauce of equal parts soya sauce and rice vinegar, maybe with a little bit of chili paste mixed in
If you are extra hardcore, you can make your own wrapper instead of buying the premade ones. I’m not very good at judging the measurements of flour to water but it’s roughly 3 cups of flour to 1/2 cup cold water and 1/2 cup hot water. You may need to add more flour or water depending on the consistency.
