Happy Lunar New Year! In honor of the Year of the Ox (my zodiac sign), I’m sharing my dad’s infamous dumpling recipe. There are many ways to celebrate the Lunar New Year, but eating dumplings has always been a tradition for my family.
I’m not going to bore you with a story of what these dumplings mean to me – just know that they are delicious and easy to make. My dad learned how to make dumplings from his mom growing up in China and has been making it for me for as long as I can remember. This recipe has been a work in progress throughout my childhood, and it is now perfect (in my humble opinion) and something my dad has always been proud of.
If you want traditional Chinese dumplings, this is for you. (They are pork dumplings but you can use any ground meat or vegan alternative).
How to make traditional Chinese pork dumplings from scratch:
Time: 1 Hr 30 Min
Yield: around 100 dumplings
Ingredients:
Dumpling skin:
- 5.5 cups of flour
- 2 cups water
- 2 egg whites
- 1 teaspoon salt
Dumpling filling:
- 2 cups of chopped cabbage
- 1/2 cup of pulsated mushrooms
- 1 pound of ground pork
- 1 tablespoon onion pounder
- 1 teaspoon Chinese 13 spice mix
- 1 teaspoon Ginger powder
- 1/2 teaspoon white pepper powder
- 2 tablespoons rice wine
- 1/2 cup chicken stock
- 2 tablespoons oyster sauce
- 1-2 cups of green onion (based on your liking)
- 3 tablespoons soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon dark soy sauce
- 1 teaspoon sesame oil
How to make the dumpling skin:
- Pour the flour, water, egg whites, and salt into a bowl and mix. (You can do it by hand or with a KitchenAid mixer)
- When the mixture is thoroughly mixed, let it sit in an oiled bowl with a wet towel on top.
How to make the dumpling filling:
- Finely chop 2 cups of cabbage.
- Dice 1/2 cup of mushroom. Or you can put the mushrooms in a food processor and gently pulsate. Do not let it turn to mush.
- Finely dice 1-2 cups of green onions. If you like green onions, do 2 cups, if not, just do 1 cup.
- Pour all of the dumpling filling ingredients in a bowl.
- Mix the ingredients until thoroughly mixed. You can hand mix or use a KitchenAid if you have one.
Now the fun begins . . . time to make the dumplings:
- Roll out the dough into a rope an inch wide. I use the technique of rubbing my hands together like I’m warming them up.
- Rip the dough into sections an inch thick.
- Roll each section into a ball to get ready to form your dumpling skin.
- Use a roller and flatten the dough balls into circles. They don’t have to be perfect, but make it thin enough that you can put enough stuffing in it.
- Once the dumpling skin is rolled into circles, you can fill them with the stuffing.
- Fill the dumpling dough with 1-2 tablespoons of filling.
- Fold the skin in half until you can pinch it together.
- Pinch the skin in 3 spots and fold it over.
- The end result should look like this.
If you’re a pro, you should be able to fold the dumplings in 3 easy folds and still get the perfect creases. Either way, have fun with it. Even if they don’t look amazing, they will still taste great.
For cooking the dumplings, you can either boil them for dumplings or pan fry them for potstickers.
To boil dumplings:
- Boil a pot of water
- Once the water is boiling, put in as many dumplings as you want. Make sure the water is covering the dumplings.
- When the water starts boiling again, add more water.
- Once the water boils a second time, the dumplings are done.
- They should look like this and they are ready to eat!
To pan fry the dumplings aka potstickers:
- Oil a pan and put the dumplings in.
- Add a quarter cup of water and cook on medium with a lid on.
- Once the water evaporates and the potstickers are a golden brown, they are ready.
Now they are ready to eat and share them with your friends and family, enjoy!
If you need some sauce, my favorite is mixing 1 part soy sauce, 1 part Chinese black vinegar, and 1 part hot sauce (you can use any). 
