How to make Chinese dumplings Dumplings, also call JiaoZi in Chinese, are a very traditional Chinese food, and it is essential during the holiday in China. In Northern China, people eat dumplings as their daily food, not only during the holiday. Dumplings have a very long history. As the spring festival mark the start of a new year in Chinese calendar, people eat dumplings to connote their wishes to family for the following year. The Chinese dumplings are consists of two parts, the fillings mixture and the wrappings or skins.
By taking specific steps, we can make a bowl of traditional Chinese dumplings. The first and most important step of making dumplings is to produce the wrappings or skins of dumplings. The wrappings are mixture of water and flours. In a bowl, put the water into the flours, and knead it by hand to form the mixture into smooth dough. The mixture ratio of water and flours are one to four. Because if put more water into the mixture of water and flour, it is easy to put the filling mixture and wrapping together, but when you boiling the dumplings, the dumpling may be broken easily.
Otherwise, if you put add less water into flours, the mixture will become hard, so it is difficult to knead it into dough. Then, cover the dough by a big bowel or pot and put it aside for half-hour, and scatter some dry flour on the board. After that, continue knead the dough and roll it into cylinder-shaped long dough. Once you completed kneaded the dough, take a knife and chop the dough into multiple small pieces. Then, press each piece with your hand, so you can get a pancake-shaped ball, and using a rolling pin to roll each piece into a very thin circle.
The thin circles are the final dumpling skins. Sometimes, people would buy the ready-made dumping wrapping from the supermarket for convenience. The next step is to produce the filling mixture, and it is also very important because it determine the flavor of the dumplings. There is no set rules represent what make the dumpling fillings. They can be anything from vegetables, meats, or seafood, but most people would prefer the combo of pork, ginger, and cabbage. The process of make filling mixture is very compliant.
First, shred the cabbage and put into a pot, and the strips of cabbage should be very thin and small. Then, put the minced meat into the same pot contains the cabbage strips, and mix them together by hand or a stick. Once the meat and cabbage are mixed up enough, put salt, oil, and soy sauce into the mixture and mix them again and again. After complete mix up the meat, cabbage, and sauce, let the mixture sit for a while to become dry. When the wrappings and fillings are ready, we need to combine them together to make complete dumplings.
Take one piece of wrapping and hold it with you palm. Then, place a portion of filling in the center of circle wrapping; you may need a spoon to help you take the filling from the container. When people place the filling, people like to put some coins into some lucky dumplings to connote the good wishes to someone who eat the lucky dumplings. The next step is to wet the edge of the circle wrapping with water, once the edge has been wet, fold the circle in half and press together the top of the edge. Then, press each side together by finger to produce a complete dumpling.
Place the dumplings into flour tray and repeat the process with the remaining dumplings. There are different ways to wrap the crust up. For instance, in order to make the dumplings looks pretty, people would make some pleats when they pinch the top of edge together. The complete dumplings look like a half-moon shaped and ready to boil. There are two ways to cook the dumplings, put into boiling water or fired them. When the dumplings had thrown into boiling water, they were sinking in the bottom of pot. After cooking for a while, they will float in the top of water, and it is ready to serve.
On the other hand, the fired method is put dumplings into a pot with oil and cooks them, when the dumplings turning into golden from white, it is ready to serve. Before eating the dumplings, you can prepare some soy sauce, vinegar, spicy oil or something related your flavor contained by a small dish. Dumplings, is a very traditional food in China, made by mixture of meats and vegetables and flours dough. Because it represent the good wished for family and friends, people in China ear it during holidays. Otherwise, it is very simple but delicious; people also eat it as daily meal.
