An Easy and Delicious Dumpling Recipe!

Being stuck at home for weeks on end has meant a lot of changes in the way we all live life. For many people it’s also meant cooking at home regularly for the first time! In my household my husband is the one who does most of the cooking—its his hobby and he chooses to do it because it relaxes him after a day of work. Lucky me!

That said I do like to try things myself every once in awhile, and this quarantine period has made me want more treasures from home in the form of homey Chinese food and Filipino food. Enter the most obvious thing to start with: dumplings!

While I’m not a recipe poster, I figured I’d share my latest go-to recipe for Pork and Shrimp dumplings. This is a friend’s family recipe, and is packed with flavor and easy for a first-timer. I love making dumplings at home—it’s easy and it can feel quite therapeutic to wrap them while watching tv or listening to good tunes. One batch makes around 50 dumplings, which lasts several meals! Let me know what you think!


Pork and Shrimp Dumplings

Ingredients:

  • 1 pound minced pork

  • 0.7 pounds of shrimp

  • lots of chopped Chinese chives or yellow chives, or both! Around 1 cup is what I toss in.

  • A handful of dry woodear mushrooms or Chinese mushroom

  • Dumpling wrappers (round) or wonton wrappers (square)

Pork and Shrimp dumpling recipe
Pork and Shrimp dumpling recipe
Pork and Shrimp dumpling recipe
 

PREP WORK

WOODEAR MUSHROOMS

Clean and put in warm water for 20 minutes until softened. Remove from water, dry and chop into small pieces.

PORK

Marinate with the ingredients below. Mix with hands and set aside.

  • 4 teaspoons light soy

  • 1 teaspoon salt

  • 1 teaspoon sugar

  • 1 teaspoon oyster sauce

  • 2 teaspoons of corn starch

  • 1 teaspoon of chicken powder or bouillon

  • 2 egg whites

  • white pepper to taste

  • sesame oil, to taste

SHRIMP

De-shell, de-vein and clean. Put in 1 teaspoon of corn starch and 1/2 teaspoon of salt. Mix and let sit for 15 mins, then rinse thoroughly afterwards. Dry and cut up into small pieces. Add a bit of salt and then add to pork with the chopped chives and wood ear.


Make the Dumplings!

I’m not gonna go into detail on how to fold the dumplings, since there are so many ways! The pictures above are from the most recent dumpling session—I just used a super basic triangle fold because I could only find square wrappers and I did a mix of these and the diamond.

Below are a few better examples, depending on if you have square or round wrappers. Where do you find them? I would say go to your local Asian supermarket, or Chinatown to pick up something like this, but if you can’t I’ve tried these ones from Whole Foods and they aren’t bad at all. You can also make your own!


Cook

Two main ways to do this depending on how you want to enjoy them:

BOIL:

Boil for 3 minutes until the dumplings float, then add a cup of fresh water until they boil again (another 2 minutes).

PAN FRY:

Place flat in a pan with medium heat and more than enough oil to cover the whole pan. Don’t move them. Wait until the side touching the pan starts to brown (about 1-2 mins). Turn the heat on high, add half a cup of water and immediately cover for around 3 minutes, until the skin on the top of the dumpling is translucent.

Remove the lid and wait for the rest of the water to boil off. You can move the dumplings around to make sure they’re not sticking, but don’t flip them. After the water is boiled off it will start to fry again. Once the bottom re-crisps (around 2 minutes) remove them and enjoy with the dipping sauce below!

DIPPING SAUCE

Two parts ChinKiang (Zhenjiang) vinegar
One part soy sauce
Chili oil

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