It’s soon to be Chinese New Year, which means making dumplings (jiaozi – similar to gyoza or mandu). It’s more fun making this as a family, but with a few hours to spare over the weekend, it’s perfectly doable on your own.

One thing to note: these are probably bigger than any you’ve had in a shop. The philosophy behind dumpling-making is to have more filling and less skin, so bigger is better. This is also because we eat them by breaking each dumpling in two and dipping the centre in Chinese vinegar, so the size we’re aiming for is basically 2 mouthfuls per dumpling. And yes, that means the fillings are around twice the size of your normal dumpling from the shop.

You can make jiaozi with all sorts of fillings. My favourite is actually pork and fennel fronds, the fronds weren’t in season at the shops, so this version is with Chinese chives (jiu cai, aka kow choi).

The recipe serves 3-4, but only 2 on Chinese New Year! Traditionally, we’d put a coin into one lucky dumpling, but that’s not done here because we wanted all our teeth intact.

This includes instructions for both the fillings and the skin. Some people prefer to buy pre-made frozen dumpling skins, but the frozen skins are not as stretchy, and you’ll need to wet them with some water for them to seal properly. This means you can’t fit as much into the dumplings, and they are also more likely to break when you’re boiling them.

Again, with this type of recipe, the specific amounts are more fluid, so please use the below as a guide only, and hopefully there are enough photos to make this easy to follow.

Ingredients
2 cups of plain flour (300g)
500g of Chinese chives
500g of minced pork with high percentage of fat content
2 teaspoon of five spices powder
2 tablespoons of chopped/marinated garlic
1 teaspoon of soya sauce
A few drops of sesame oil
Salt to taste
1 egg (optional)

You’ll also need water and more flour for dusting. Continue reading “Pork and Chinese chives dumplings recipe (jiao zi) – the Northern way”