Dumplings

Lily's Dumplings

Before

After

This recipe makes A LOT of dumplings. I fed four adults and a child (everyone had additional servings), and after that, there was still plenty left over. Probably feeds somewhere in the neighborhood of 8-15 people.

Please keep in mind, my recipes are not to be taken as an exact science. I cook by my sense of taste and smell. My recipes change a bit every time I make the same thing. I'm only trying to nail down the basic idea for those of you who are interested in making some of these food choices. Bon appetit!

Ingredients:

Pot Sticker Wraps (5-6 packages of 36 wraps)
4/5 head of cabbage
most of a medium size package of full size carrots
green onions
3 pounds of ground turkey
2 eggs
salt
soy sauce


Directions:

1. Cut the cabbage, carrots and green onions extremely fine, somewhere between dicing and mincing (closer to mincing - a food processor aids in this task tremendously). Mix the ground turkey, cabbage, carrots, green onions, 2 entire eggs, and salt (leaving all of these ingredients raw).

2. Next comes the wrapping part. Not sure how to describe this process. I used water as glue. Place a modest portion of the meat mixture in the middle of a circular piece of a pot sticker wrap. Moisten the edge of half of the circle. Bring the tip of the middle of the moist portion to the tip of the middle of the dry portion of the pot sticker wrap (we're still talking about the edge of the circle). From there is making the dumpling look pretty. The description of this step stops here (sorry!).

3. Bring a pot, at least half to two-thirds full, of water to a boil. Once the water is boiling, drop some dumplings in the water. Be careful not put too many in at once. How many one ought to put in depends on the size of the pot. I put in about 8-12 at a time, but I was using a reasonably wide and deep pot. Once the dumplings are all floating, the dumplings are ready to eat. Per my mom's habit, I pour a couple to three cups of cold water in the pot, wait for the water to boil again before pulling the dumplings out to serve.

Note: In process 3., the dumplings can be pan fried or boiled.

4. Serve the dumplings with soy sauce as a dipping sauce. There are other variations of dipping sauces. A common Taiwanese dipping sauce for dumplings is to add minced garlic to the soy sauce. Another possibility, suggested by my friend Junko, is to mix soy sauce with rice vinegar.