Inspired by the success of last week’s recipe from Dinner: A Love Story and also wanting to do something different with those dang fresh ham steaks, tonight we took on gyoza:

Photo by Robert Banh

This was my first time making stuffed dumplings, and it was a lot easier than I thought! The filling was a mixture of ground pork, green onions, ginger, water chestnuts, Chinese five spice, and soy sauce – tasty, but not overwhelmingly flavorful. Next time I think we’d include garlic and a chili or two to give it a bit more of a kick. The trickiest part seemed to be getting the right amount of filling into the center of the little wonton wrappers so that they wouldn’t tear but also wouldn’t have too much (admittedly unappetizing) wonton wrapper left over.

Instead of frying the gyoza as directed in the recipe, we steamed them for about 8 minutes per batch of 9, all that our steamer basket could hold. The frying would’ve also imparted more flavor, but as I mentioned the other day, we’re trying to be healthy, and the calories omitted for the oil allowed us another gyoza or two each. Shane whisked up a simple dipping sauce of three parts soy sauce, one part vinegar, and a bit of sweet chili sauce to taste – and we dug in!

On the whole, this was a successful enterprise – instead of the 36 gyoza mentioned in the recipe, we ended up with more like 50: enough for dinner, lunch tomorrow, and a quart bag tucked away in the freezer for a quick dinner sometime soon.

Recipe:
Pork Dumplings from Dinner: A Love Story