Ratings - Ease: 1/5, Taste: 5/5, Price: $
Scale: Ease out of 5, with 5 being easy and 1 difficult. Taste out of 5, 5 being delicious and 1 being disgusting. Price out of 5 dollar ($) signs, $ being cheap and $$$ being expensive.
Link to the video recipe:
Link to the written recipe:
This was by far the most time-consuming, complicated dish I've ever made. It was Chinese New Year on the 12th, so I felt obligated to make one of the numerous traditional CNY foods. I remembered a saying we learned in Mandarin class that went something like "for the New Year, Chinese people eat dumplings because their shape represents a gold ingot", so dumplings seemed like the perfect choice. The only issue was that I had literally zero experience with dumplings. I ended up spending 4+ hours making dumplings, a process that consisted of 7 main steps: mixing up the dough ingredients, kneading the dough, rolling out the individual dumpling wrappers, making the filling, pleating/shaping the dumplings, preparing the dipping sauce, then finally cooking them. I used a separate recipe for the filling, so see my previous post.
The initial phase of mixing up the flour, water, and salt was pretty easy, but somehow I forgot to add salt. That made the dough kinda bland, but it ended up being a good thing, since the dipping sauce was very salty, which balanced out the under-salted dough. I don't have a stand mixer, so I kneaded the dough by hand for about 10 minutes. I had a bit of trouble rolling the dough out into a perfect circle, but it ended up not really mattering, because the final dumplings' appearance was much more about the job done pleating the dumplings than the shape of the wrappers. The sisters do a great job of explaining how to pleat the dumplings, but it still requires practice. What took me 4 hours probably takes the average Chinese grandmother 1 hour. The techniques aren't insanely difficult, but doing them for dozens of dumplings is extremely tiring for a beginner like me.
The final, and arguably most important, part of the dumpling-making process was cooking them. I tried out two methods: steamed and pan-fried. The pan-fried method produced crispy dumplings, with an unparalleled flavor. The only problem was that about 1 in 10 ended up sticking to the pan, and those ones were lost causes. In all fairness, they are called potstickers though, so it does make sense. The steamed ones are much easier, just place them in the basket (with a bit of parchment paper to prevent sticking), and take them out after 10 minutes or so. Perfect. They're also easier when doing large quantities of dumplings, which you most likely will be doing if you make this.
Making dumplings from scratch for the first time will probably take up an entire day of work, leaving you exhausted at the end, but it's definitely worth it if you pull it off. The best part is that the prepped but uncooked dumplings can be frozen and cooked whenever, so you can make extra and have dumplings anytime you like in the future. I can't say this is a must-make dish because of how much time and effort it takes, but it's certainly one of the best things I've ever made.
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