Pot Stickers

Pot stickers from Toronto, Hong Kong, Toronto again, Singapore, and my unworthy ones in Florida

Pot stickers.  How can you not love these?  how can you not go to the ends of the earth to try every variety?  The first time I had really good pot stickers was when I first moved to LA.  So magical, so transcendental.  I've been making my own for years but I still experiment and play with the fillings and try new ways to cook them.  I had some in Toronto a couple of years back that had a magical crust, which I've been trying to reproduce with moderate success.  But the ones I had in Hong Kong at Peking Shui Jiao Wang were so perfectly cooked I could cry.  


For New Years I figured it would be good to show you my attempts at making pot stickers and a few tricks I've learned.  Once you make your own you will never want to look at those frozen bags of dumplings in the store ever again never mind cook them.  

As you might imagine there are a gazzion recipes and things to put in your pot stickers.  What I like with mine is a good mix of pork and veggies.  For the filling you will need about 1/2 lbs of ground pork, 3-4 cloves of garlic, minced, about a tablespoon of minced ginger, 3-5 green onions diced, and some napa cabbage, chopped.  


You will also need about 1 tbl of light soy, 1 to 2 teaspoons of sesame oil, and a dash of white pepper.  Put all of the filling ingredients into a bowl and mix with your hands.

Basically I'm looking for an even ratio of pork to veggie.  So add more cabbage and green onion so that you get that ratio.  To my mind you need the right about of meat to veggie to have a really good pot sticker.  Many times the ones I've had in restaurants are nothing but meat, and that just isn't what I think of as a truly great potsticker.  


Now a word about the wrappers.  Yes you can buy ready made wrappers but if you are going to the trouble to make your own pot stickers do you really want some one else's wrappers?  A big part of the texture issues come back to how the wrapper cooks and the store bought ones are too thin and break way to easily.  They just don't give the right texture.  And making your own is way too easy.

Combine 2 1/2 cups of unbleached flour, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, 1 table spoon lard (yes lard! but crisco works) and 1 cup boiling water.  Mix and kneed so you get a nice well incorporated mound of dough.  Let rest for about 20 minutes covered.  Work the dough into a long snake shape about 1 to 1 1/2 inches in diameter.  When you are ready to start rolling, cut off small bits of dough, roll into balls, lightly dust with flour, flatten and roll out a round shape as I have here.  Take a little practice and I'm sure you'll have some odd shaped ones at first and some that are too thin.  But shoot for something that is about 3" in diameter and about 1/8" thick or a bit thiner than that.  It should be lightly dusted with flour.  I will make up 5 or 6 of these at a time and then fill them.  Or if you have a helper, it is great to have one person rolling and one person filling.  


Here is a little video that Ms. Choppy helped me make on how to fill the pot stickers.  

As you fold them, lay them out on a cookie sheet and you can freeze them like this and bag for later feasting.  From this size batch I've described, I'll get enough to have for dinner (along with a nice green, like bok choy) and freeze the rest for one or two meals down the road.  Often nice to double up and use a whole pound of pork.  Scale the rest appropriately and you'll have a couple trays worth of these babies.

I bet you are dying to know how to cook them?  I think that might need to be another post as it has its own tricks.  You can boil them, steam them or best of all pan fry them.  Which is what I typically do.  But I'm still trying to get mine to come out like the ones from Toronto or Hong Kong and that is taking a bit more practice.