China · Home-style
Handmade Dumplings
Pork and chive dumplings sealed by hand and boiled until the skins turn glossy, with a dipping sauce of black vinegar and soy.
Making dumplings is a communal task rather than a recipe: the dough is mixed by one pair of hands while another fills and seals, and the work is spread across a table. The chive and pork filling here is a northern combination, valued because the chives season the meat as much as flavor it themselves. Boiling them in batches with repeated additions of cold water is what keeps the skins springy instead of tearing.
Ingredients
- flour200 g
- cold water150 ml
- sesame oil3 ml
- lean ground pork250 g
- fatty ground pork20 g
- ginger3 g
- scallion15 g
- salt3 g
- oyster sauce2 ml
- sesame oil2 ml
- light soy sauce2 ml
- egg1 pieces
Directions
- 1
Put all the flour in a basin.
- 2
Add the sesame oil.
- 3
Make a small well in the middle of the flour.
- 4
Add the water in four or five additions while mixing, until the dough comes together as slightly dry crumbs.
- 5
Stop adding water and press the crumbs firmly together with your hand.
- 6
Keep pressing until the loose flour around the basin is worked in; this is the point where the bowl and the dough are both clean.
- 7
Set the dough on the table with the basin turned upside down over it, at about twenty-five degrees, and let it rest around forty-five minutes.
- 8
Once rested, roll it into a rope, gather it back into a ball and roll it into a rope again; repeat three times.
- 9
Roll it into a long rope and cut it into twenty equal pieces, rolling each into a ball about three to three and a half centimeters across.
- 10
Flatten each ball, dusting your hands, the board, the rolling pin and the dough with flour so nothing sticks.
- 11
Roll each one out to about eight centimeters across and two millimeters thick, with the center roughly a millimeter thicker than the edges.
Source: HowToCook · WorldBite adaptation · Unlicense source text; bilingual recipe adapted by WorldBite.