stepho&crank

Last week, I brought you the glories of soup dumplings. This week, a new dumpling: homemade jiaozi.

Because I am mildly obsessed with all things food-related, upon moving to Beijing I quickly tried to locate a cooking school where I could learn traditional Chinese dishes from the pros. I came across Hutong Cuisine, where chef Chun Yi brings you inside her home in a traditional hutong area of Beijing and teaches everything from dumpling-making to wok-seasoning.

Craig and I recently took Chun Yi’s homemade dumpling and noodle making class, where we learned how to choose the right soy sauces and vinegars, how to make tasty fillings that hold together without getting too soggy, how to make and roll your own jiaozi dough, and finally the important art of packing and sealing your dumplings.

For this class we made a variety of dumpling fillings, from chicken and corn to tofu and mushroom to pork and scallion. Click here for a recipe of the pork dumplings we made. One of the important secrets we learned is that any vegetable added to the dumpling filling must first be mixed with salt and then let to sit for ten or so minutes (in the case of the pork recipe above, cabbage, but in class we also did it to carrots and dried mushrooms). This draws water from the vegetables, which are then squeezed and set aside. The (now very flavorful) water is actually reserved and still incorporated into the filling, but at a different step in the process (apparently if you add the vegetables to the meat without doing this step the water will come out and make your fillings quite soggy. If you incorporate the water on its own, in small batches, the meat is able to fully absorb all the water).

The next step in the process is making the dough. The dough is a very basic recipe, consisting of water and a high gluten flour. The tricky part is after the dough is made, when you cut the dough into small pieces and then roll each piece out into individual jiaozi wrappers. See photos below for our attempts at rolling, filling, and sealing the dumplings.

Needless to say the entire process, though fun, was time-consuming for us novices. Though many Chinese families make jiaozi batches in the hundreds, our five-hour class gleaned each of us only 16 dumplings. Sigh. The meal at the end of the class was worth it, though, and the dumplings were delicious. We served the dumplings with a soy sauce and vinegar sauce (equal parts of each) that contained an astonishing 16 cloves of garlic. Mmmm. Group favorites of the day seemed to be the pan-fried pork dumplings, though the steamed chicken and corn variety was also a big success.