potstickers
I absolutely love potstickers. To be honest, I love anything steamed. From gyoza to bao, mandu to shumai, I could eat dumplings and steamed buns all day, every day. I have an abundance of steaming baskets in my kitchen, and they are almost falling apart from use.
In the past, I would buy the frozen wrappers and stuff them with all manner of fillings. They work great, however, the extra time that lockdown afforded me led me to try making the wrappers myself. Turns out, the dough is simple, and the outcome is way beyond what I expected. Definitely worth a go, if you have the time.
The recipe below is for my favourite fillings, pork with mushroom and chicken with ginger, but feel free to play around and make your own favourite fillings. There are so many great vegetarian and meat-based variations that you can do, so play around and see what you like.
for the wrappers
300g plain flour
0.25 tsp salt
150ml boiled water
75ml ice cold water
for the pork filling
400g pork mince
100g white cabbage
100g mixed wild mushrooms
1 tsp minced garlic
0.25 tsp 5-spice
1.5 tsp light soy sauce
0.5 tsp mirin
1 spring onion
0.25 sesame oil
0.25 tsp fish sauce
1 tsp corn flour
black pepper
for the dipping sauce
50ml light soy sauce
20ml white rice vinegar
2 tsp sesame oil
1.5 tbsp sugar or honey
1 tbsp red chilli flakes in oil
0.5 chopped spring onion
1 tsp sesame seeds
for the chicken filling
250g deboned chicken thigh
100g minced ginger
2 tsp minced garlic
1 spring onion
0.25 tsp 5-spice
0.25 tsp mirin
0.25 tsp rice vinegar
1 tsp light soy sauce
1 tsp corn flour
method
If you have chosen to make the dough from scratch, that’s the first step. If you are going to use the premade versions, feel free to skip ahead.
Start by adding the flour and salt to a large bowl. Then, pour in the boiled water and stir with a wooden spoon until the flour looks like a loose crumble.
Then, pour in the iced water (without the ice) and vigorously stir until a rough dough begins to form. At this point, put the spoon down and get your hands involved. Knead the dough for a couple of minutes, until it all comes together, then tip onto a surface.
Continue to knead on the surface until the dough becomes elastic and feels smooth.
Put the dough in a new, clean bowl, cover loosely with some damp kitchen roll and then wrap the bowl in cling film. Let it rest whilst you make the fillings, but for 20 minutes at least.
Both of the fillings follow a very similar process. You’ll want to mince, chop or grate every ingredient as small as you can get it. Once that’s done, mix all the ingredients for your chosen filling together in a bowl, as thoroughly as you can. You want the filling to hold together as much as possible.
You can also prep the dipping sauce in this period, by chopping the spring onion as fine as you can get it, then mixing all the ingredients together in a bowl. Easy, eh?
Once the dough has rested, tip it out onto a lightly floured surface and cut it in half. Roll one half into a long sausage shape, roughly an inch in diameter, and cover the other half with a damp piece of kitchen roll to stop it drying out.
Chop the dough into 10g sections. You’ll probably get around 20 from each half of dough.
For each section, roll it into a ball in your hand before using a rolling pin to flatten it into a disc of around 3.5 inches in diameter. Try, if you can, to make the edges a little thinner than the middle.
Hold this disc in the palm of your hand and, using a teaspoon, add a portion of the filling to the middle. You’ll quickly learn how much filling these can handle, so scale up and down depending on how it reacts.
Fold the circle in half and, using your thumb and forefinger, crinkle and pinch the seams together to form your potsticker. You may find that you need to rub a wet finger over the edge to get the seams to join, if your dough has begun to dry out. Try to make sure there are no air pockets inside the potsticker, and that you give the seam a final pinch around the edge to make sure it is all fully sealed.
Repeat this process with the rest of the dough, placing the finished potstickers on a lightly floured tray, plate or surface.
Once you have formed all of your potstickers, it’s time to cook. You can always just steam these in a bamboo basket, if you so wish, however, they work best as potstickers. Below is how to get that perfect brown crunch on the bottom, with the top being perfectly steamed.
Start by heating a frying pan over a medium heat.
Add enough oil to coat lightly coat the bottom of the pan, being sure to swirl it around as it heats.
Once the oil is heated, add a layer of your potstickers. You can get quite a few in, but try not to crowd them too much.
Let them cook for a couple of minutes in the oil, until the bottom begins to brown ever so slightly.
Add enough water to the pan for it to cover the bottom. You don’t want the potstickers to be floating in water, but you do want the bottom of each one to be wet. This is probably around a quarter of a cup of water.
Put the lid on the pan and let them steam for a minute or two. Just enough time for the tops to feel cooked.
At this point, remove the lid and keep cooking until the water has completely evaporated. It’s this stage, when the water is evaporating, that gives the bottoms that lovely brown crunch, so be sure to give it enough time.
Check the bottoms every so often, and remove the potstickers when you are happy with the result.
You can then add a little more oil, and repeat the process until all your potstickers are cooked.
Eat them as you go, or all at the end, with the sauce you made earlier.
