First, we must start with dumpling skin. Weigh 350 grams of flour, add 2 grams of salt, and stir the two evenly. Salt increases the strength of the gluten and makes the dumpling skin smooth and elastic.

Then pour 200 grams of cold water and stir quickly while pouring.

Transfer the mixture from the bowl to the work surface (if the kitchen counter is not suitable for the dough, transfer it to a large pastry board) and mix the dough by hand.

The dough should be evenly smooth and elastic, which is the same as the picture below. The whole process takes about 15 minutes.

The dough at this stage is not ready for use because the gluten in the dough has accumulated too much stress and the elasticity is too great. It needs to relax and rest. The relaxed dough becomes very soft and can easily be twisted into the desired shape. When letting the dough rest, keep it in something air-tight, like a container or wrapped in plastic wrap, so that it does not dry out.

While waiting for the dough to relax, we can prepare the filling. Today, the dumplings we are going to prepare are Chinese Cabbage and Pork. This is the combination of the common dumpling stuffing in the north and my favorite taste. Take 4 cabbage leaves, wash and cut into large pieces of 5 cm width.

Put the chopped cabbage into a boiling pot of water and cook for 5 minutes.

Take it out and rinse it with cold water. After cooling, dry the leaves.

Hold the cabbage leaves with your hands and squeeze out the juice.

Cut the dried cabbage leaves into small pieces.

Chop 25 grams of green onions.

Put 500 grams of ground pork into a large bowl, add 1 teaspoon of white pepper, 4 grams of sesame oil and 40 grams of soy sauce. The soy sauce is darker in color and can be used to dye the dumplings into an attractive brown color.

Add 4 grams of cut or ground ginger.

Then use a fork or chopsticks to stir in. The purpose of this is to ensure that all ingredients are incorporated together, and therefore will stick together in the cooked dumplings.

Stir in chopped green onions.

Add the cabbage juice squeezed out earlier into the meat, stir, let the meat fully absorb the juice.

Then add the chopped cabbage and mix well.

Now, our dumpling mixture is ready. Put plastic wrap over the top of the bowl and put it in the refrigerator for about 10 minutes. The water absorption capacity of the meat filling will decrease as the temperature rises. In order to avoid the evaporation of the water in the filling during the packaging process, it is necessary to refrigerate it.

While waiting for the filling to refrigerate, we can handle the dough. Divide the dough into four equal parts and roll one of them into a long strip of about two centimeters in diameter. The remaining dough is placed back in the sealed box to prevent it from drying out.

Cut the strip into 12 equal parts. When cutting, twist the strip by 90 degrees for each cut, otherwise you will not have uniform pieces.

Round each piece.

Coat with a bit of flour, and press flat on the counter into a shape like is shown below.

When making dumpling skins, it is best to put them into a sealed box after finishing each roll, so that they do not dry out.

To form the skin that will be ready to fill- coat with some flour on both sides of the dumpling skin, then use a rolling pin to make it thin. It is best to turn the skin as you roll it out, this makes it thinner at the edges. It is important that the skin is thicker in the middle than at the edges.

The ready dumpling skin is like this.

Take out the refrigerated dumpling stuffing, take a small amount in a small spoon, place it in the center of the dumpling skin, and roughly round it with a spoon.

There are many ways to make dumplings. Some methods are quick to pack, and some methods will look better. Here is the method that is commonly used in our home. This method is to put the pleats on the 3/4 part of the dumpling skin, and then pinch the remaining 1/4 part with these pleats. When pinching the pleats, start at one end of the filling.

After the 3/4 circumference is pinched, this is the case.

Then push the part without the pleats to the part where the pleats are pinched and knead them together.

The result of a busy half-day labor will be well worth the effort when you see how beautiful they are. At the beginning of the packaging, the movement will be slower. In order to avoid the dried surface of the dumplings, they can be stored in a sealed box.

Fill a pot 2/3 full of the water and bring to a boil. Note that the amount of water must be sufficient. Only when the amount of water is sufficient, the water temperature will not drop too much when the dumplings are put in, ensuring that the surface of the dumplings has been cooked before it comes into contact with the bottom of the pot, so that it will not stick to the bottom of the pot and will not stick to each other. Don’t put too much in each pot. Like the 20 cm diameter pot in the photo below, we cook about 18 each time.

After all the dumplings are placed in the pot, use a silicone (or wooden) spoon to stir the water in the pot, and let the water drive the dumplings to turn them together to prevent them from sticking together. Don’t push the dumplings directly with a spoon, lest you poke them (this is why you should use a silicone or wooden spoon instead of a sharp metal spoon). After a minute, wait until the surface of the dumplings is shaped.

When the water in the pot boils again, pour a bowl of cold water on the dumplings and start timing. It takes about 5-6 minutes to cook the dumplings, and cold water needs to be poured 2-3 times in the middle. The purpose of pouring cold water is to shrink the surface of the dumpling skin and maintain the taste.

Cooked dumplings are best served hot. Eat a hot dumpling, served with a favorite Chinese sauce. This will be a first-class dining experience. The dumplings wrapped in the method described here not only have the elasticity of the outer skin, but also the juicy stuffing is absolutely not comparable to the cold frozen dumplings in the supermarket. Of course, the most important thing is that your family can finally make dumplings. The next generation has a lot of warm memories to relish.