Gyoza. Dumplings. Pot stickers. No matter what you call 'em they are delish. I once walked like 30 minutes into the heart of Chinatown in NYC to get dumplings. Five for a $1. I wish I could do that anytime I pleased, but since I cannot I headed into the kitchen to give my gyoza cravings some justice.I'm proud to report I tried my hand at making my own and the results were wonderful. Plus the best part is that you can get creative and put whatever you want in these little suckers and they will most likely be awesome.
I was lucky to find a little Asian store in the DC suburbs selling most of my favourite ingredients. Since it's off the beaten path and one of those tiny-aisle, full-on-fish-on-ice types of places, everything is dirt cheap. I got the wrappers for less than a buck.
Once you track down the pre-made dough for the Gyoza (although you can make it if you have a lot of time on your hands) you'll need the following ingredients:
- About a pound of ground chicken for the filling. (I used chicken as per my man's request but beef, shrimp, pork, veggies, tofu can all be used.)
- 1 scallion finely chopped
- 2 cups cabbage (I ended up using Bok Choy because I had an abundance of it laying around and I honestly didn't notice a difference in taste)
- a dash of garlic powder
- 1 egg
- 1 carrot finely chopped
- a little less than half of an onion chopped
- a dash of both vegetable oil and sesame oil
- a pinch of minced garlic
- less than half a cup of water
Make sure you have defrosted the Gyoza wrappers ahead of time. Then you sautee the garlic and onions with in some vegetable oil. Once the onion becomes transcluent in color, add the cabbage, scallion and carrot until the cabbage leaves are wilted. This takes about 3 to 5 minutes. Then throw in your filling, the garlic powder and the egg. Once the meat (or tofu, etc) is cooked through and the egg isn't runny remove from heat.
Now for the fun part....spoon about a tablespoon of the filling in the middle of a gyoza wrapper. Pinch it closed. You can use some water or egg white or oil to seal it.
Then add the sesame oil to the same pan and brown the gyoza on both sides. Make sure not to burn them.
Finally add the water to the pan and cover. The water should come up to less than halfway on the little guys. Let them steam and remove from heat once all the water is gone.
Now get ready to induce some food coma. When I made these the plan was to share with my entire house. The plan miserably failed as none were left in the end. In all honestly I burned a few from the batch making them inedible, but not THAT many. I think the man and I just started eating and couldn't finish until they were all gone.
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