The key to great dumplings (猪肉白菜饺/手擀饺子皮)
is... a good homemade wrapper. Here we'll show you how to sort northern style dumplings, from scratch, including the wrappers (one of the most underrated bits).
Why make the wrapper yourself?
Kind of like sandwiches in America, both dumplings and sandwiches probably about 99% of the discussion always revolves around fillings - go to a dumpling shop in China you're greeted with a bunch of.. fillings, and ditto with a sandwich joint in North America.
But all of this discussion, I think, ignores what's undeniably the most foundational element of both dumplings and sandwiches – that is, the starch that you're wrapping it with. The very best Philly cheesesteak in the world served on a hot dog bun? It's not gunna be the same.
So then. What we look for in a good dumpling wrapper is gunna be three things. First, you want it to be… tanya, QQ, have a good bite to it, almost like a nice pasta. Second, you want it to have some body – this isn't a gossamer thin wonton after all, the starch is part of the experience. And lastly, you do want freshness – the longer the wrapper sits out, the more flour you dust over it, the more the wrapper can sort of separate from the filling and rob you from that satisfying uniform bite.
Now of course, to continue the analogy, just like you can pick up a loaf of sandwich bread, the busy homecook in China absolutely will, at times, reach for store bought dumpling wrappers. But For whatever reason, store-bought's often missing a bit of bite, and because they're so uniformly cut they'll often lack the necessary body. Not to mention, because they have to sit around for so long at the grocer, they're often pretty dry and seem to have that aforementioned separation issue.
So while there's no shame in reaching for store bought wrappers, just know that making it yourself is definitely worth it, and with a bit of practice, can all be sorted in under an hour.
Quick note on flour brands
The flour in the North of China is rather high in protein and importantly quite finely milled, which means that if you were blindly charged forward with your Gold Medal AP you might not have the greatest time.
In our experience, the best substitute for a Northern Chinese flour would be something like an Italian 00 – in our old Lamian video we used some Caputo's Chef Pizza Flour which worked brilliantly.
But because we know calling for fancy Italian flour can be kinda annoying in its own right, so we'll use Bob's Red Mill's AP flour for this recipe – while it wasn't quite as good, with a bit of hydration tinkering we found that it still absolutely did do the job.
Second, while we can't buy it here in China, our enormously talented Patron jeneric also helped us try out some King Arthur Flour for this recipe and she absolutely raved about the results. King Arthur is a pretty thirsty flour though, so you will probably need a bit more water than the usual 50% hydration.
And… lastly, Gold Medal. Unfortunately in both our tests and hers for whatever reason it just didn't seem to make for a satisfactory wrapper, we might just be missing something, but for this recipe let's just use one of the aforementioned three (Italian 00, Bob’s Red Mill, or King Arthur), or of course, a flour from China if you can get your hands at some.
Norther Style Pork and Napa Cabbage Dumplings
Dumpling Wrappers:
If using Chinese or 00 flours: 300g flour, ¾ tsp salt, 150g water
If using Bob’s Red Mill AP: 305g flour, ¾ tsp salt, 140g water
If using King Arthur flour: 300g flour, ¾ tsp salt, 156g water
If using Pillsbury AP flour, 300g flour, ¾ tsp salt, 153g water
Process:
Make the autolyse. Combine the salt with the flour, slowly drizzle in the water while stirring. Once you have those scraggily bits, smush it all together into a ball. Rest for 20 minutes. Note that if using Chinese or 00 flour, you probably will not need this step.
Knead the dough for 10-15 minutes. You can also use a stand mixer on speed three. Rest for fifteen minutes.
Break the dough into four logs, then divide into 9-10g balls. Thoroughly flour, then smush into a disc.
Roll out the wrapper by rolling from the edge into the center, twisting the wrapper as you go. You should roll ~16 times to get something ~2.5 inches or ~6.5cm in diameter.
Dumpling Filling:
Ginger-Sichuan peppercorn water:
Sichuan peppercorns (花椒), ½ tbsp
Ginger, ~1 inch smashed
Hot, boiled water, 2/3 cup or ~160ml
Napa cabbage (大白菜/娃娃菜), 300g
Salt, to purge the napa: 1tsp
Ground Pork belly (五花肉) (or pork leg/ham (后腿), or collar (梅肉) or fatty pre-ground pork), 300g
Seasoning for the pork:
Salt, 1 tsp;
Five spice (五香粉), 1 tsp;
Chicken bouillon powder (鸡粉), 1 tsp;
Cornstarch (生粉), 1 tsp;
Soy sauce (生抽), 1 tsp;
Liaojiu a.k.a. Shaoxing wine (料酒/绍酒), 1 tsp;
Ginger-Sichuan peppercorn water from above, 2/3 cup
Oil to coat:
Peanut oil (花生油), 2 tbsp
Toasted sesame oil (麻油/香油), 1 tsp
(Or use a northern style seasoned oil (recipe shown below), ~1/4 cup or 60ml)
(Note: when using unseasoned oil, I like going lighter on it. You can also add more oil if you prefer.)
Process:
Steep 1 inch smashed ginger and 1/2 tbsp Sichuan peppercorn with 2/3 cup (160ml) hot, boiled water for ~30 minutes. Strain when cool.
Mince the napa into about 2cm pieces, then mix with 1 tsp salt. Let sit for 10-15 minutes. Squeeze out the liquid, then transfer to a tofu or cheesecloth to help squeeze out even more. Set aside.
Mix 1 tsp each of salt, five spice, chicken powder, cornstarch, soy sauce, and Liaojiu aka Shaoxing wine in with the pork. Then slowly drizzle in the ginger-Sichuan peppercorn water, stirring constantly.
The water adding process should take about 3-5 minutes, the pork should feel slightly sticky in the end. Optionally ‘dat’ by slamming the mixture into the bowl 3-4 times to develop a little spring.
When the dumplings are ready to wrap, mix the purged and squeezed cabbage in with the pork mixture. Then mix in 2 tbsp peanut oil and 1 tsp toasted sesame oil (or 1/4 cup, ~60ml, seasoned oil listed below).
Norther Style Seasoned Oil to Coat and Flavor the Filling:
This will make for a larger batch than you need for this recipe, which you can store in the fridge to flavor dumpling fillings or mix with noodles/salads. Note that in the north they would usually use Dacong (大葱) - Allium fistulosum – for this oil, which we are substituting with scallion and white onion.
Peanut oil, 1.5 cups
Scallion (小葱), 100g
Celery, preferably Chinese celery (香芹), 50g
Onion, ¼ medium
Garlic, 4 cloves
Ginger, ~1 inch
Spices:
Cinnamon stick (桂皮), ½ stick
Star anise (八角), 2 pcs
Fennel seed (小茴香), ¼ tsp
Process:
Steep 1/2 a cinnamon stick, 2 pcs star anise, and 1/4 tsp fennel in water for ~10 minutes before cooking. This will prevent the spices from scorching
Roughly mince 100g scallion, 50g Chinese celery, 1/4 of a medium onion, 4 cloves garlic, and 1 inch ginger.
Slowly fry the minced aromatics and steeped spices in the oil over a medium flame. This will take a bit – around 20 minutes or so. You want the onion to be ever so slightly starting to brown, but you want to stop before things get to the golden brown stage.
Dip everything into a bowl while still hot, then cover. Let it steep overnight.
Next day, strain out the spices and aromatics.
Wrapping and Boiling Dumplings:
For wrapping, please refer to the video for a better visual.
When boiling, add the dumplings to a rolling boil, then cover. Once the water is at a boil once again, uncover from now on, add ~½ cup of cool water. Allow the dumplings to get back up to a boil once again.
Traditionally, this is repeated two more times until the dumplings are done (3 times total). However, when using Bob’s Red Mill, we found that the dumplings ran the risk of getting slightly water logged. With the amount of filling we are using today, repeating once more (2 times total) was enough.
Take it out, serve with a quick dipping sauce of 1 tbsp soy sauce, 1 tbsp dark Chinese vinegar, 1 clove minced garlic, with an optional 1/2 tbsp Lao Gan Ma chili crisp.