Second attempt at making guotie or pot stickers

§ November 17th, 2008 § Filed under slice of life § No Comments

I love the Hakka dumplings my mother made. Her recipes called for glutinous rice flour and tapioca flour , which are not stretchy and rather difficult to handle. I helped whenever my mother made dumplings during special occasion i.e. winter solstice, but almost always ended up making dumplings with holes. So I never try making them myself.

I could not find glutinous rice flour and tapioca at the Korean grocery store. So, decided to make different kind of dumplings with wheat flour – Jiaozi. This kind of dumplings is very popular among the Chinese people from Mainland and Taiwan. I used to have that very often during get together with Taiwanese friends from the Chinese church before I went home to Malaysia in 2001.

Hakka dumplings typically use a lot of turnips,  leeks, carrots, a little bit of dried shrimps and shredded pork for the filing. Most of the recipes I found for Jiaozi called for ground pork, shrimps, Chinese chives, napa cabbage and ginger.

The first attempt, I followed the Jiaozi recipes I found online, make them with ground pork, shrimps and Chinese chives as main ingredients. The dumplings turned out to be really twisted and ugly after throwing  them into the boiling water, though the taste was alright and T cleaned up everything.

I found this video on Youtube that shows this expert mama demonstrating how to pleat the dumplings, so decided to make the second attempt.

I don’t really like the Chinese chives, so I omitted that this time. I have turnips, carrots, mushrooms, gingers, scallions, shrimps and ground pork. Basically, what I can easily find, at the Korean grocery store we shop.

I was afraid the “paste” might not be sticking with too much vegetables and less meat. But it turned out fine. This time, I decided to make pot stickers instead dumplings. They are basically the same, the difference is just cooking them in the boiling water (Jiaozi/dumplings) or pan fried (Guotie/pot stickers).

Three cups of flour churned out about fifty of dumpling. I cooked enough for our dinner, brought some over to the in laws and the uncooked leftover were assembled on a baking sheet, froze for 20-30 minutes until no longer soft, and then placed in ziploc bag to keep in the freezer. They will be handy bento lunch for T to bring to work and my lunch.