I remember helping my grandma wrap dumplings on a weekend when I was young. My grandma loved it as it meant we got to spend some quality bonding time together, my parents loved it as it kept me out of mischief for hours and I loved it because it meant delicious soup dumplings for dinner – so WIN all round!
A recipe that requires a bit of skill and precious – something that I still haven’t quite mastered – need to work on my dumpling wrapping skills.
Makes approximately 40 soup dumplings
INGREDIENTS:
Dumpling Filling
- 250g 5% fat minced pork
- 150g prawns (raw or cooked)
- 1 shallot
- 2 spring onion/scallion
- 1/2 egg
- 6 shitake mushrooms (or 3 dry Chinese mushrooms)
- 1/5 tsp salt
- pinch of sugar
- 1 tsp cornstarch
- 1.5 tsp soy sauce
- 1 tsp sesame oil
- 1/2 tsp white pepper
- 1 tsp Shaosing Wine (available at Asda, Tesco or Chinese grocery store)
- 1 tsp cold water
Dumpling Wrappers
- 200g all purpose flour
- 100g warm water
METHOD:
Dumpling Filling
1. Chop minced pork to make the texture finer and place in a large bowl.
2. Mince shallots. Dice prawns, spring onion and shitake mushrooms.
3. Add shallots, prawns, spring opinion, shitake mushrooms and egg to the minced pork. Mix well. (If you use cooked prawns, do not mixed. If you use small prawns, don’t dice)
4. Add salt, sugar, cornstarch, soy sauce, white pepper, Shaoxing Wine and cold water to the minced pork mixture. Mix thoroughly.
5. Leave mixture for approximately 5 minutes.
6. Mix in sesame oil to the minced pork mixture. Once mixed throughly, the filing mixture is ready.
Dumpling WrappersÂ
1. Add flour into a bowl, gradually mix in water and knead into a smooth dough (approximately 10 minutes). If you add too much water, add more flour. The flour should not stick to your hands or the surface.
2. Leave dough to rest for 15-20 minutes.
3. Knead for 2 minutes and roll it into a long cylinder shape. Cut the dough into a few pieces. Divide each piece of dough into small balls.
4. Dust surface with flour to avoid sticking and roll each ball out into a round sheet (approximately 8cm in diameter and 1.5mm thick. The middle should not be too thin but the edges should be thinner as they will double up when wrapped and if the middle is too thin, it will break when we add the filling.
5. Dust plate with flour and place each wrapper on the plate, stacking them on top of each other. Make sure you add flour to the top of each wrapper (separating each wrapper with flour).
Filling the dumplings
1. Spoon 1.5 tsp of mixture into the dumpling wrapper and fold the dumpling wrapper so the edges are all sealed. Be careful not overfill as this will cause the wrappers to split.
2. Pressing along the edges to make sure they are sealed properly. If the wrappers are a bit dry, add water to the edge and press.
  
Cooking the dumplings
1. Boil a pan of water.
2. Once boiled, add dumplings in batches. Once the dumplings float, they are cooked and ready to serve.
Normally, I have my dumpling with soup noodles.
Enjoy!
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Gobbytraveller 