Pictorial: Pot Stickers

[hzrt8w]

Pictorial Recipe

Pot Stickers (鍋貼)

This popular Shanghainese specialty needs no introduction.

Picture of the finished dish:

Serving Suggestion: 8-10 (as appetizer)

Preparations:

Main ingredients (upper right, clockwise):

- Ground pork, about 1 lb

- 1 small egg

- Garlic, use 5-6 cloves

- "Pot sticker" wrapper, 2 packs - to make about 70 pot stickers. These wrappers are twice thicker than wonton wrappers.

- Chinese chive, about 1/2 lb

- (Not shown) ginger, about 2 inches in length

(Note: The traditional meat of choice for making pot stickers is pork. You may easily adapt this recipe using ground chicken, turkey, beef or other types of meat. Some even use pressed tofu. The cooking procedure is the same.)

Marinate the ground pork in a mixing bowl. Add 2 tsp of sesame oil, 2-3 tsp of light soy sauce, 2 tsp of ShaoHsing wine, 1/2 tsp of salt, 1 tsp of ground white pepper, 1-2 tsp of corn starch.

Mix well.

After washing (typically there is a lot of mud near the roots of the Chinese chives), chop the Chinese chive into 1/2 inch in length.

The texture of cooked ground pork is a bit rough to be used as fillings for pot stickers. I used a food processor to make the ground pork filling a little bit smoother.

Add the marinated ground pork and chopped Chinese chives in the food processor. Trim ends, peel and press 5-6 cloves of garlic. (Not shown in picture) grate some ginger (about 1-inch in length). Add to the mixture. Beat an egg and add half of the beaten egg to the food processor. Save the other half for sealing the wrapper later.

(My food processor is small. I needed to break it up into 2 batches.)

This is how it looked when the mixture was all ground and mixed together.

Getting the fillings ready for wrapping.

To wrap a pot sticker: place one wrapper flat on your palm.

Spoon on a little bit of beaten egg to help to seal the wrapper.

Place a spoonful of filling in the center of the wrapper.

Fold the wrapper in half with the filling in the middle. Use the fingers of the other hand to pinch hard along the semi-circular edge. This will help sealing the filling inside.

Continue to pinch along the edge and seal the semi-circular edge.

Press down on the plate slightly to flatten the bottom of the wrapper so that it will stand up on its own.

Observe that the bottom of the pot sticker should be nice and flat.

Continue the same process to wrap the rest of the pot stickers.

Cooking Instructions:

Use a large size pan. Set stove to medium. Add 4-5 tblsp of cooking oil.

Lay the pot stickers flat (with the sealed semi-circular edge pointing up) on the pan. Pot stickers usually take about 15 minutes to cook.

After frying for about 5 minutes, add 5-6 tblsp of water.

Water will quickly boil into steam.

Place the lid on the pan. Let the steam cook the rest of the pot stickers for 7-8 minutes.

After 7-8 minutes, remove the lid. The water should be all evaporated with only the cooking oil remained. Turn up the stove setting to high. Fry another 2-3 minutes.

To make the condiment for pot stickers, finely shred some ginger - about 1-inch in length.

Place the shredded ginger in a small dish. Add about 3-4 tsp of Chinese red vinegar.

Transfer the pot stickers to a serving plate. Serve with the ginger/vinegar condiment.

Picture of the finished dish.

Note that these pot stickers have a tendency to stick to the "pot" (hence the name). Use a steel spatula to separate the pot stickers from the pan.

Tips on storage

1. If you don't cook all the ingredients in one setting, the best way to store them is to store the filling and wrappers separately. You may keep them in the freezer, and defrost them to make some fresh wrappings the next round.

2. If you have already wrapped them, you can freeze them. However, don't put them crowded together when putting in the freezer. First freeze the uncooked pot stickers individually - don't let them touch each other, or else they will glue together. You will tear the wrapper apart when trying to separate them. Then put them in a bag to store in the freezer.

[divalasvegas]

Those look amazing Ah Leung and I know they must taste amazing as well. Your demos always makes Chinese home cooking so approachable. I would never think of making potstickers at home, but after your demo, why not? We even have the same frying pan.

[yimay]

yum! love dumplings!

check out my pleat-folding method here:

http://www.holyshitake.com/archives/2004/0..._dumplings.html

[hzrt8w]

check out my pleat-folding method here:

http://www.holyshitake.com/archives/2004/0..._dumplings.html

←

Fantastic! Thanks yimay. My method is a lazy-boy method. No wonder it doesn't look like the ones in the restaurants.

[Grub]

Dang, another excellent demo... My to-do list is filling up here. And Yimay's pleat-folding method looks like just the thing to make it all perfect. Great stuff.

[Anna N]

All I can say is that I am drooling over my keyboard. Thank you, again.

[jo-mel]

I like your filling, xiao hzrt! I usually use frozen spinach, a la Rhoda Yee, but I like the taste of chives better, so next time-------. And -- I like that amount of garlic.

Also, I usually pleat and invert. When I have pot stickers in my cooking classes, no one dumpling turns out the same. My idea of a pleat is not someone elses, no matter how much I demonstrate, but when they are placed snugly in the pan and inverted onto a plate, they all look the same, and any pleat imperfection is forgotten. The flavor is the important thing!

How many can you eat at one sitting?

[Shalmanese]

What a coincidence, we just made some boiled ones last night. Two different fillings, Chinese pickled cabbage and Celery/Cabbage with homemade wrappers. I'm absentmindedly munching on some cold ones right now while surfing eG.

Homemade wrappers make a world of difference for potstickers. Just make a simple dough from AP flour and water with the consistancy slightly stiffer than a pasta dough and knead well. Split into little balls about the size of a die and roll with a rolling pin into a circular pattern. I suppose you could run it through a pasta machine and then use a ravioli cutter as well if you have those in your house. It wouldn't be traditional but I'm betting it would still be good.

[Dejah]

Homemade wrappers make a world of difference for potstickers. Just make a simple dough from AP flour and water with the consistancy slightly stiffer than a pasta dough and knead well. Split into little balls about the size of a die and roll with a rolling pin into a circular pattern.

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We had a big feed of potstickers at our usual Winnipeg dim sum restaurant on Friday. The filling looked very much like Ah Leung's but wrapped differently: more "bulbus". It was our Chicago visitor's favourite so we ordered a dozen.

As for using the rolling pin, I use my very old heavy duty tortilla press. Perfect circles every time!

[JasonZ]

yum! love dumplings!

check out my pleat-folding method here:

http://www.holyshitake.com/archives/2004/0..._dumplings.html

←

Jimay:

What an elegant pleating method ... between the two recipes and two closure methods, we now have a world of potstickers!!

Thanks so much!!

[hzrt8w]

Supplemental:

Thanks to poster yimay, my pot stickers are improving.

This time I chose a different wrapper. This wrapper is smaller. They seemed to be produced for making Japanese Gyoza, which typically are smaller than Chinese Pot Stickers. I like the smaller size. The wrappers are thinner too.

Pleat the wrapper as she described in her webpage:

http://www.holyshitake.com/archives/2004/0..._dumplings.html

Nicely arrange the pot stickers around the plate in a circle. It is a little bit more work - spending more time in pleating and wrapper more quantity because each pot sticker is smaller. But the result is worth it.

Can take more pot stickers in a frying pan for each batch. The timing is about the same, perhaps a bit shorter.

The result. Can you tell the difference between these and the ones from my first round?

[stephenc]

yum! love dumplings!

check out my pleat-folding method here:

http://www.holyshitake.com/archives/2004/0..._dumplings.html

←

If we have multiple people wrapping dumplings, it always turns into a contest to see who can make the most pleats.

I once made one with 12 pleats. It was incredible.

Another variation I like to use for the filling is to add shrimp. The ingredients exactly like yimay's recipe, but with chopped shrimp instead of mushrooms.

Edited November 6, 2006 by stephenc (log)

[Kent Wang]

I like a lot of browning and crispy skin. I don't add any water, just pan-fry only.

[Anna N]

Ah Leung, you are an inspiration!

The pleats are coming along but not yet as pretty as I would like - practise, practise, practise. These are pork and shrimp filled.

[jo-mel]

Nicely done xiao hzrt! Are you going to practice inverting them on a plate next time? That always is fun!!!!

[zoe b]

just wanted to thank you, Ah Leung, for a super tutorial--I made these last night, and they were delicious!

They weren't quite authentic--I couldn't get pot sticker skins at the store so I used won ton wrappers--so I didn't get to try pleating--well, next time.

the filling was delicious--I was concerned because the ground pork looked too fatty to me when it was in the package, but it cooked into a nice tender filling. I used scallions instead of chinese chives--the next time I'll make a trip to the Asain grocer so I can be more authentic--I also subbed black vinegar for the sauce as i don't have any red.

Once I got into the rhythm of the work it was quite pleasant--one of those peaceful kitchen jobs--if you aren't rushed they are very enjoyable.

i was afraid to use my big revereware pan like yours because of the sticking--I used a teflon one instead, and in my usual impatience I had the heat too high so some of the dumplings were "well done" --next time I'll keep heat on medium.

But you certainly made a daunting task seem simple--thank you, again!!!!

Sorry, no pics--we gobbled them too quickly....

Zoe

[hzrt8w]

Thanks for your kind words, Zoe. I found that if Chinese chives cannot be found, leeks can also be used. Green onions would be a distant cousin but can be used too - I hope the garlicky-onion taste would not dominate the taste of the filling.

There are recipes for potstickers that use all kinds of other fillings too I think. I haven't done any research to find all of them.

[Dejah]

I used silkened chicken and Spanish onion in light oyster sauce for my potstickers. This offered a different meat and flavour from the other items we offered as a lunch combination platter: siu mai, char siu bao, sticky rice, har gow.