Homemade Potstickers and Dipping Sauce

I love Asian food and dumplings of all kinds are definitely in my top five favorite Asian foods. Wontons, dumplings, gyoza— I love them all. Only when I was taking this photo of the ones I made did I realize how weird they must look to people who've never heard of them before. They're so delicious but at the same time look like slimy little skin bags. Now that I've said that, you're probably never going to look at potstickers the same. Sorry.

I used to get the potstickers from the frozen section of the grocery store to snack on, and for a while it was a staple every time I'd have friends over, no matter whose house we went to. All of us had them on hand at all times. I had never made them from scratch and while it seemed like an extremely difficult process, I looked up a few recipes and realized it wasn't as daunting as it sounded. This recipe yielded about 50-60 potstickers, of which I made 20 and froze the rest. 

Pork Potstickers/Chinese Dumplings

• 1/2 pound ground pork
• 2 leaves napa cabbage (finely cut)
• 1/2 teaspoon sesame oil
• 1 teaspoon rice wine vinegar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 inches ginger (grated)
• 1 carrot, peeled and diced
• 2 chives, diced
• 1 pack potsticker skins (choose the thickest brand or make your own)
• Oil for pan-frying
• 1/2 cup water

Combine the ground pork, chopped napa cabbage, ginger, carrot, leeks and seasonings together. Set aside.
Place a small spoonful of the filling in the center of the potsticker skin. Dab a little water with your finger and circle around the edge of the skin, and then fold and pleat the potsticker accordingly. Repeat until filling is gone or all skins have been filled. (Here's a video / guide for folding/pleating potstickers)

To pan fry the potstickers, coat a frying pan with a little cooking oil and turn to medium heat. Place the dumplings on the frying pan and then turn the heat to high. Pan fry the potstickers until the bottoms turn golden brown and crisp. Add the water and cover the frying pan with its lid immediately. Cook until water has evaporated and turn the heat to low. Cook the potstickers for another 2 minutes or so, dish out and serve hot with dipping sauce.


Simple Dipping Sauce

• 4 Tbsp soy sauce
• 2 pinches brown sugar
• a dab of sesame oil
• a few drops rice wine vinegar
• 2 drops sriracha (depends on how spicy you like it)

Combine all ingredients in a bowl / serving dish. Stir until brown sugar has dissolved.Garnish with sesame seeds or chives. Serve with potstickers.

Chicken & Dumplings

Chicken and dumplings is one of my absolute favorite meals. Especially because it's like chicken pot pie without the pie crust (and if you know me, you know I'm not a huge fan of pie crust unless it's made from cookies or graham crackers). Plus it's super easy to make, warms you up on cold days, and you almost always have all the ingredients in your pantry.

I had a rotisserie chicken I needed to get rid of and I'd never actually made it myself before, but I thought it tasted pretty delicious, so I'd call it a success.

It should be noted that I used a combination of a recipe found online (via Feast Ur Eyes) and my knowledge of watching my father make this on occasion to write up this exact recipe. Coincidentally, I didn't have some of the ingredients so I improvised. Here are my changes:

• no celery or peas
• 4 sage leaves instead of bay leaves
• shredded rotisserie chicken instead of making my own
• one carrot because it was absolutely enormous

but if you do have the correct ingredients, either way is fine, obviously (also, if you don't have heavy cream, you can just use milk, whipping cream, light cream, etc). I don't have any pans with lids, nor do I own a dutch oven, so I used the deepest pan we had and used my cutting board as a lid, which worked fine, except I should have added more broth. The dumplings sucked so much of the broth up while cooking that there wasn't very much left and a lot of chicken ended up stuck to the bottom of the pan.

The dumplings turned out HUGE, but that's what I get for eyeballing the size and trying to fit all of them into my tiny, too shallow pan.

Chicken & Dumplings

• 1/2 onion, chopped
• 2 carrots, diced
• 2 stalks celery, diced
• 1/4 tsp thyme
• salt
• pepper
• 2 bay leaves
• 4 cups chicken broth (1 cup reserved)
• 1/4 cup all purpose flour
• 1 cup frozen peas, thawed
• 2 cups cooked chicken, shredded 

For the dumplings:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/3 cups heavy cream
• 1 Tbsp dried parsley (can be substituted with rosemary, thyme, basil, etc)

Heat 1 Tbsp olive oil in large dutch oven (or a deep pan with a lid) over medium heat. Sauté onion until softened, about 2 minutes. Add carrots, celery, salt, pepper, thyme, and bay leaves. Sauté until vegetables are softened, about 5 minutes. Add 3 cups chicken broth, scraping any brown bits off the bottom of the pan. Add in most of the chicken and the peas. In a separate bowl, heat 1 cup chicken stock and slowly whisk in 1/4 cup flour (use a sieve to pour mixture into the soup if it is lumpy). Bring soup up to a boil and reduce to simmer, uncovered, about 10 minutes, or until broth is thickened. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Stir flour, baking powder, parsley, and salt in large bowl. Stir in cream until incorporated (dough will be very thick).

Discard bay leaves and return stew to rapid simmer. Add reserved chicken to stew along with any accumulated juices. Using 2 large soup spoons, a small ice cream scoop, or your hands, drop golf ball-sized dumplings onto stew about 1/4 inch apart (you should have 16 to 18 dumplings). Reduce heat to low, cover, and cook until dumplings have doubled in size (or until a toothpick inserted into them comes out clean), 15 to 18 minutes. Serve.