Shiho’s Asian Kitchen

Gyoza, as known as Dumpling in America, is a popular Chinese dish. It is called Jiaozi in Chinese, Gyoza in Japanese, Mandu in Korean.

 In Northern China, Gyoza is eaten as a principal food. The skin is thick, and the popular way of cooking gyoza is 水餃子,boiling it in a soup or hot water.

To the contrary, in Southern part of China, people usually eat flied gyoza with thinner skin than 水餃子. It is served as one of dim sums, and sold in stalls as well as restaurants.

Gyoza came to Japan after World War Two. We generally call flied gyoza as Gyoza. They are eaten as a side dish with rice.We have an amusement park of Gyoza, in which we can enjoy many kinds of gyoza or famous gyoza restaurants all Japan. As it shows, gyoza is one of the most popular side dish in Japan.

In America, getting gyoza skins is difficult for me and other Asians who live in countryside. However, if you live in a big city or near Asian stores, you can get them easily and cook gyoza much easier.

Today I will introduce cooking delicious gyoza from very beginning=from skin! .

INGREDIENTS

種 (inside meats of goza)

Minced pork                  100g

Leek / green onion    1 bunch

Cabbage                    3 leaves

A

A piece ginger

A piece garlic

Sake                                1tbs

Soy sauce                        1tbs

Sesame oil                       1tbs

Salt                              1/2tsp

A little pepper

Oyster sauce                   1tbs

(If you have it)

Skin

All purpose flour            300cc

Bread flour                     100cc

Boiled water                   150cc

Cornstarch/potato starch

Let’s Start Cooking!!

1 How to make gyoza meat

Grate the ginger and the garlic. Chop leek and cabbage finely.

Put all A in a bowl with cabbage, leak, and grounded pork and knead for 5 minutes until it gets sticky.

Cover bowl with plastic wrap and leave it at a room temperature.

2 How to make gyoza skin

Put all purpose flour and bread flour into a bowl, and pour hot water onto them.

Mix them with chopsticks or a spoon roughly until the dough gets as warm as you can touch.

Knead the dough until it become smooth. (5-10 min)

Make the dough into two balls, wrap each of them by plastic wrap, and leave them 30 minuets at a room temperature.

Spread cornstarch on a table and roll and shape each dough into a stick with a diameter of 3 centimeters (about 1.2 inch)

Cut the sticks into small pieces so that each piece is 8 grams. (If you prefer larger skins, Cut them into 10-gram pieces)

Sprinkle cornstarch on each piece of the dough and roll out the dough so that it gets as thin as possible with round shape.

Sprinkle a little cornstarch on each skin to prevent them from sticking to each other, and pile them up.

3 How to make gyoza

Put a little water on the whole edge of a skin, put “gyoza meat” onto the skin, and wrap it.

See the video and learn how to wrap gyoza!

Oil over a pan, and place gyoza side by side in the pan. Then heat the pan over a high flame.

Cook gyoza until its bottom side gets golden brown.

Mix 1 tsp potato starch into 100cc hot water, and pour the water over gyoza.  Put a cover immediately on the pan, and steam gyoza until the water completely evaporates (around 5 minuets)

Cover the gyoza with a flipped large plate, turn over all pan and plate, and move gyoza from the pan to the plate.

Make a sauce with soy sauce and vinegar (soy sauce: vinegar=1:1), and enjoy the gyoza with the sauce!! (You can put a little chill oil in the sauce if you would like to)