How To Cook & Choose Your Own Dumpling Adventure

Looking to get experimental in the kitchen? Home chef @jessica_nguyen_ shares her DIY dumpling recipe for #isoeats.

Who are you and what do you do?
I’m Jessica Nguyen, a home cook living in Melbourne and I’m all about inspiring people to cook at home for themselves and for the people around them, one Instagram story at a time. I share step-by-step recipes and the full cooking process via my Instagram stories and save them as highlights, so you can cook with me any time @jessica_nguyen_

What’s your favourite dish?
There is absolutely nothing better than bowl of fresh Vietnamese Beef Pho.

What’s your favourite budget meal to cook?
Boujee instant two minute noodles. I chuck out the pack seasonings and add in my own plus whatever is in the fridge. Think sesame oil, soy sauce, chopped spring onions, leftover meat and greens, eggs and hot sauce. Still takes two minutes but taste so much better.

What are you cooking for us today?
This is a simple recipe for Pork and Chive Chinese Dumplings, but gives you the choices along the way. You can choose: what optional extras you want to add to the filling, two different ways to fold your dumplings (purse fold, or a simple half taco fold) and then three different ways to cook them: steamed, boiled or pan fried. Think of it like a ‘choose your own dumpling adventure’ recipe.

Makes – 50 dumplings
Ingredients – 8
Cooking time – 45 minutes
Skill level – Easy to moderate

Ingredients

1 tray (500g) of pork mince
1 packet (500g) of dumpling wrappers (Gyoza, Gow Gee)
1 bunch of Chinese chives or 4 stalks of spring onions
1 tablespoon of sesame oil
1 tablespoon of corn flour
2 eggs

Optional Extras – If you have any of these at home, feel free to add them in to boost the flavour or to change the dumpling mix.

2 garlic cloves finely chopped
½ red onion, finely chopped
1 small finger of ginger, grated
1 tablespoon of fish sauce
150g of prawns, peeled and finely chopped

Method

Filling

1. Finely chop as small as you can the aromatics of your choice.
2. Crack your eggs into the mixture. Stir until fully combined.
3. Also add the condiments that you want and stir until combined.
4. Slowly add the corn flour and further mix until combined. The corn flour and egg act as binders to bring all the ingredients together so you get a paste like mixture.
5. Also peel the wrappers from each other in the bundle so you don’t have to worry about this when you start folding. Cover the wrappers you’re not using with a tea towel so that they don’t dry out.

Folding

Now we need to cover the meat filling with the dumpling wrapper so that none of the filling is exposed and no water can get in during the cooking process. There are so many ways to fold dumplings but I’m sharing two relatively simple ways to do it because in my opinion, you want to be spending less time folding dumplings and more time eating them because regardless of how they look, they will taste the same.

Option 1 – Purse Fold
- Spoon a heaped teaspoon of the filling into the centre of the dumpling wrapper.
- Dip your index finger into a small bowl of water and trace the perimeter of the dumpling wrapper.
- Fold in half but only pinch the top closed (your dumpling should look like a taco) and then slowly bring each side up and fold them over like an envelope. Place onto your bench top and pinch together to seal it.

Option 1 – Taco Fold
- Simply dip your index finger into a small bowl of water and trace the perimeter of the dumpling wrapper and then fold the dumpling in half like a taco and seal up the ends.
- If you pinch them with spaces in between, they end up getting crimpy edges when you cook them.

Cooking

When it comes to cooking dumplings, you can cook them a whole heap of ways depending on what you prefer. I’m going to show you the three main ways:

Steaming
- Ideally you would use a bamboo steamer to steam dumplings, however I actually don’t have one at home so use the following hack with what I have at home.
- Grab a colander or anything that resembles a bowl and has holes in it and place it on top of a pot of boiling water. Make sure there is space and air flow between the boiling water and colander so that your dumplings can steam.
- Crumple up some baking paper and then line your colander with it. This prevents the dumplings from sticking (you’ll thank me later).
- Add your dumplings to the colander ensuring they have enough space between each other and then cover with a lid and steam for about 8 minutes.
- Using mittens, open the lid to check if they are ready. Remove and serve onto a plate.

Boiling
- Self explanatory but drop your dumplings into a pot of boiling water ad cook for approximately 8 minutes.
- The only thing to be weary of with this method is that sometimes they can stick to the bottom of the pot, so make sure you gently add them to the water and give the pot a stir every few minutes.
- Once the dumplings float to the surface, scoop them out with a slotted spoon and serve hot.

Pan Frying
- Pan frying is a fun cooking method because you get a crispy bottom but steamed top. Heat a fry pan (that you have a lid for) and once hot, add some oil to the pan and then add your dumplings.
- After 3 minutes or so the bottom should crisp up and be a golden brown colour.
- Now add some boiling water to the pan, enough to fill just the surface of the pan. Cover the pan with a lid and allow to steam for another 5 minutes.

Assembly

The normal way to eat dumplings is to have them on a plate with separate dipping sauces that each person can dip into, but when I eat them at home, I like to add all of my condiments and herbs to the same plate as the dumplings and eat them straight off the plate. Less dishes and less work!

1. Finely chop herbs of your choice – I normally go for coriander and spring onions.
2. Place your dumplings onto a plate and hit it with some sesame oil.
3. Add a dash of white vinegar to a bowl of soy sauce and then using a spoon drizzle the sauce on top of your dumplings. Don’t try to pour soy sauce from the bottle onto your dumplings. It always ends up in a soy sauce disaster for me. This method is more controlled and you use less sauce.
4. Now drizzle your dumplings with some chilli oil. For a homemade chilli oil recipe, check out my ‘Chilli Oil’ highlights on my Instagram page.
5. Finally, sprinkle the herbs of your choice that you finely chopped.

Eat and enjoy!

Who would be at your dream dinner party?
Chrissy Teigen (with John Legend as her +1), Jonathon Van Ness coming with Antoni Porowski, Jon Favreau with Roy Choi, Alison Roman, the whole Bon Appetit Test Kitchen team, Rickey Thompson, Ricky Gervais, Ryan Reynolds and Quentin Tarantino. Everyone would have to bring over their favourite dish or food and a bottle of what they love drinking which I think would make for the best night ever.

Where can we find your takeaway menu and what dish do you highly recommend?
I will leave food delivery service to the incredible restaurants out there currently offering takeaway! If you're a Melbourne local like I am, check out Eat’aliano by Pino. I recently ordered this mind blowing pizza called the ‘Tartufata’, which has sausage, mozzarella, truffle cream, shaved parmigiano and FRIES on top. I repeat, FRIES! It’s one of those dishes that sounds weird but is actually the bomb.com and makes me wish I thought of this idea. Find their menu here eatalianobypino.com.au.