Food Lab: Food Lab: Dumplings

Lordy, y'all, we did a Food Lab this past weekend (more on that later), and it alerted me to the fact that we did a Food Lab back in March that I never documented.

Oops.

It's been a busy spring.

Anywho, for my birthday back in March, we did Food Lab: Dumplings (gyoza style only - no shumai).

This has been on Chef Spouse's wishlist for a while. One, he loves dumplings. Two, it can be good garde manger, since fillings can really be whatever your lil ole heart desires. Three, they seem like a good option for parties. Four, you can make them in batches, freeze them, and then have them ready to serve in minutes because they can go straight from the freezer to the pot.

So, dumplings.

It's now been several months, so do I remember most of what we learned?

Nope.

Here's what I do remember:

Most filling recipes call for cabbage. You may be thinking: "What is cabbage actually bringing to the party? It's not terribly flavorful on its own. Hell, I don't even like cabbage. I'll skip it." Do not skip it. The cabbage acts as your binder for all the other ingredients, like breadcrumbs in a crab cake (or meatballs).

Yep, we used all that cabbage

You need way less filling than you think, both in your individual dumplings and overall. We overdid, as usual, with four separate full batches of filling (pork, shrimp, veg, and pork+shrimp). This resulted in a grim assembly line of "Good God, how much more filling is there?" and cramped fingers. Make less. No, less than that. No, still less.

Use wonton wrappers, preferably the circular ones. Many websites will tell you you can use square wrappers, too. They are lying. Square wrappers are BS. So is making your own. Chef Spouse has subsequently tried making the dough from scratch, and he's an ace dough maker (makes fresh pasta of all types all the time), and he can confirm: just buy the wonton wrappers. Less fuss and better results.

2 packets = good

2 packets = straight-up evil

See those janky dumplings on the left?

Square wrappers

Just say no

I could not master the cute little ruffled folds, even with eleventy-billion dumplings to practice on. Chef Spouse and The Executive Committee did great, though. So I stuck to plain half rounds, which are not as pretty but taste the same.

See my boring half-round dumplings v

the cute ruffled dumplings

(But they were all tasty)

Since then, we've all had bags of individually frozen dumplings residing in the freezer (and you do have to be careful to fully freeze them individually or you end up with a Giant Squished-Together Multi-Dumpling Blob and then no one is happy), which have been excellent for a quick snack or first course.