As one of the most famous traditional Chinese foods, Jiaozi (Dumplings) has about more than 1400 years of history. In the North of China, dumplings represents peace, joy and happiness. When family members leave home, when there’s something to celebrate, when guests come over, dumplings are always a popular dish to serve.
Especially on Spring Festival, families getting together and making dumplings is a major event. “Jiaozi” in Chinese means to alternate between the hour before and after 12:00 at midnight. So on Spring Festival’s Eve, people will have dumplings at midnight, to say goodbye to the past year and welcome a whole new year. My family still keeps this tradition, after dinner, we will start preparing to make dumplings. At around 23:30, my mum will start boiling dumplings and me and my husband will go outside with dad to set off fireworks. When we come back there will be plates of steaming hot delicious dumplings on the dinner table!
Home Made Dumplings
(serves 2)
Dough
Ingredients:500g plain flour
1 egg
Direction:
Put the flour in a big bowl, crack the egg in it, add cold water and stir until it forms a soft dough. Cover the bowl and let it sit for about 30 minutes.
Having prepared the dough, it’s time to make the filling.
Filling:
Ingredients:270g pork mince
2-3 courgettes
200g spring onion
3tbsp cooking wine
1tbsp sweet soy bean sauce
1tbsp dark soy sauce
2tbsp cooking oil
2tbsp sesame oil
1/2tbsp salt
1/2tsp sugar
1/2tsp five spices powder
1/2tsp prickly ash powder
Methods:
- Put the minced pork and all the seasoning ingredients in a big bowl, stir in one direction until it becomes a paste.
- Finely dice the spring onion, keep about 1tbsp of it for later use and put the rest into the pork mince bowl. Scrape the courgettes into shreds, squeeze the extra water out. Put into the bowl, mix well.
Dumpling Skin
Direction:
Knead the dough and make it smooth. Make the dough into a ring shape, then cut it open, so you can get a stick shape. Roll the stick to make it even and smooth. Cut it into 2cm diameter pieces. Squash one piece with your hand first, then use the rolling pin to roll it flat. Remember to roll from the edge to the center and always keep the center bit thicker than the edges.
Now let’s make some dumplings!
Directions:
- Put some fillings on the skin and wrap it up. Be sure the edges are finely pinched close so the dumpling won’t open up during boiling.
- Heat up a pot, add 2/3 of water. When the water starts boiling, put the dumplings in. Carefully mix the water towards one direction while adding dumplings so they won’t stick on the bottom. Add two soup spoons of cold water when it starts boiling. Repeat this for the next boil. When it boils for the third time, it is done. Take the dumpling out with a slotted spoon.
Now the dumplings are ready to serve.
We like to dip the dumplings into Chinese vinegar, but this time, I made a special dip sauce while waiting for the water to boil, which my husband loved!
Dip Sauce
Ingredients:2 cloves garlic
1tbsp crushed chillies
10-15 prickly ashes
1tbsp cooking oil
1tbsp light soy sauce
1tsp sesame oil
Chinese vinegar
salt
Directions:
- Mush the garlic. Put it in a bowl. Remember we still have some diced spring onion left? Now put those in the bowl, add crushed chillies and a little bit of salt.
- Heat up a small pot, add cooking oil and put the prickly ashes in it. Take the prickly ashes out when you get a nice smell and pour the hot oil onto the crushed chillies.
- Put some vinegar in a pot, bring it to a boil and pour it into the bowl. Add light soy sauce, sesame oil and 2tbsp of cold water, mix well.
The beauty of dumplings is that you can use any filling you like: meat, vegetables, sea food… try it out! Maybe you will find your own favourite kind!
can you get the ingredients in Chinese shops?
yes, all the ingredients I use in this blog you can find in Asia shop or Chinese shop
looks good