Sunday night as I was going through my Google Reader I noticed an abundance of dumpling recipes on favorite sites like Chez Us and Use Real Butter. It turns out that the June Daring Cooks challenge is Chinese dumplings or potstickers. I had just recently learned about the Daring Kitchen and decided to sign up. But, it turns out there is a waiting period to be an “official” participating member. Something about keeping the challenges secret. Fair enough. I still wanted dumplings. Unfortunately, it was late, I didn’t have the ingredients and I was exhausted. So instead, I sobbed silently over a plate of hot dog fried rice. Don’t judge me.

There is one person I know that makes the best “mandu” (korean dumplings) I have ever eaten in my entire life. Her name is Wool and she is pretty much amazing. She can turn the simplest of ingredients into the most flavorful dishes you have ever tasted. Although she has told me the secrets of her mandu, I have never been able to replicate them, and believe me I have tried. Thinking maybe she was leaving out some ancient Korean secret, I bought this book by Cecilia Hae-Jin Lee called Eating Korean. It’s a great book—I’m not by any means an expert, but to me it has the most authentic looking recipes of any Korean cookbook I have ever looked at, and most importantly, it has the Wool stamp of approval. So I’m using a recipe from it as the basis for my dumplings, with a few changes.

Korean Pork “Mandu” (Dumplings)

Adapted from Eating Korean: From Barbecue to Kimchi, Recipes from My Home

The original recipe calls for mung bean sprouts, but I substituted napa cabbage because that’s what I bought. I also added a carrot and soy sauce because Wool uses both in her mandu. The recipe calls for fresh ginger, but I used powdered, well, because Wool does. And I added a little sugar … just because I wanted to.

1 cup shredded napa cabbage, washed

1/4 of a large onion, sliced

1 carrot, chopped

1/2 lb ground pork

3 large cloves of garlic

2 stalks of green onion, finely chopped

2 tsp kosher salt, divided

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 tsp toasted sesame oil

1 tsp white pepper

1 tsp sugar

1 tsp ginger powder

1 package of round dumpling wrappers (or you can make them homemade if you have time)

oil for frying

1. Salt the cabbage with 1 tsp kosher salt and allow to sit for 15 minutes. Squeeze the water out and place the cabbage into a food processor with the carrots, onion and garlic. Process until the vegetables are finely chopped. Squeeze out any moisture from the mixture.

2. In a large bowl mix the vegetables with the pork. Add the salt, soy sauce, sesame oil, white pepper, sugar and ginger powder. Mix gently with your hands until the seasonings are thoroughly incorporated into the meat. At this point I like to cook a small amount of the filling in a skillet to taste for seasonings. I can then adjust them if I need to.

3. The next step is to fill and pleat the dumplings. Set up a small bowl of water at your wrapping station. Place a teaspoon of filling in the middle of the wrapper. Then, dip a finger in a bowl of water and wet the edges of the wrapper (usually I do it halfway around so it doesn’t get too soggy). If you don’t want to mess with the pleats, you can just fold it over and pinch the edges closed. If you want to make them look pretty and authentic,  you’ll want to pleat them. I could try to tell you how, but to really understand you need to see photos of the process. Jaden at Steamy Kitchen has a great tutorial with photos that will be much more useful than any explanation I can give here. So if you need help making your dumplings look all neat and fancy, get on over there and check it out.

4. At this point you’ll either want to cook the dumplings or freeze them.

If you’re going to freeze them lay them out on a baking sheet sprinkled with flour. Freeze the dumplings until they are nearly solid and then seal them up in a ziplock bag. You can cook them later at any time using the instructions here. If you’re going to cook the dumplings you’ll want to do it immediately because if you let them sit for too long, they will get soggy. Then the wrappers will come apart, they’ll all be stuck together and you’ll be pissed.

To cook the dumplings (you do it the same whether they are frozen or fresh) arrange them in a hot, oiled skillet, flat side down. Once the dumplings are nicely browned on the bottom (a few minutes, but longer if you started with frozen dumplings), add about 1/4 cup of water (carefully, it will make a lot of noise and splatter) and quickly put a lid or a plate over the top to steam the tops of the dumplings. Once the wrappers look translucent (this only takes a minute or so) remove the lid and allow the rest of the water to cook out. Serve them right away. I like to make a dipping sauce out of soy sauce, rice vinegar, sambal oelek and a little sugar.