August 20, 2014

Chinese Boiled Jiaozi Dumpling 白菜豬肉餃子

Chinese, pork, cabbage, Jiaozi, jiao zi, Dumpling,  recipe, 白菜, 豬肉, 餃子, 白菜豬肉餃子

These little Chinese Boiled Jiaozi dumplings 白菜豬肉餃子 are the best thing to have around the house!  You make these little beauties in one go, then freeze 'em right away.  Then, whenever you're hungry for a bit of a snack, you just pull it out of the freezer and boil for ten minutes and wowsers!  Tender, hot, juicy homemade dumplings to completely satisfy your hungry belly!  

We are making these a lot these days because it's a great go to snack for my little girl who always seems hungry these days (growing spurt!).  And it makes me feel great to be able to offer a quick, easy to fix, homemade snack for her.  We've been making these dumplings so much I've been tweaking the recipe to make various improvements.  

I finally got the golden stamp of approval with this last batch when my little girl said that these were the best Chinese Boiled Jiaozi Dumpling ever!

Chinese, pork, cabbage, Jiaozi, jiao zi, Dumpling,  recipe, 白菜, 豬肉, 餃子, 白菜豬肉餃子

The reason behind our tweaking of our Chinese Boiled Jiaozi Dumpling recipe was that we were never absolutely satisfied with the juiciness of our jiaozi.  The best jiaozi is lusciously juicy, tasty and tender when you bite into it.  So...what to tweak?  More pork fat, more seasoning, more oil?  Try, try and try again.  We tweaked everything!  And finally...I think that we got it!  


The main secret is in the ratio of the vegetable to the pork!  If you get this ratio right you will find your ideal Jiaozi.  Mind you this ratio will fluctuate depending on the vegetable that you use as each vegetable has it's own water weight.

Chinese, pork, cabbage, Jiaozi, jiao zi, Dumpling,  recipe, 白菜, 豬肉, 餃子, 白菜豬肉餃子

dumpling,白菜,chinese,cabbage,jiao zi,jiaozi,pork,豬肉,餃子
Minced cabbage
dumpling,白菜,chinese,cabbage,jiao zi,jiaozi,pork,豬肉,餃子
Stir the ground pork

After trying different vegetables in our jiaozi I think I like Chinese yellow chives and cabbages best. Some vegetables are hard to use because their water content is so high that your jiaozi get watery as you wrap them which is impossible to work with.  

Chinese yellow chives have a more pungent taste and aroma which is lovely.  And the cabbage and pork combination is a food classic.  I've been using cabbage more lately as it's easier to buy and because (yeah!) I can use my little electric chopper to chop up the cabbage!  Total time saver!  And it helps the texture of the final mix that the cabbage is chopped up pretty fine.

A point to note is that the ground pork should be quite fatty, ideally half fat.  Lard is what makes things taste great and creates a luscious smooth mouth feel.  Another point to note is that you really need to stir, stir and stir the pork cabbage mixture in one direction until it reaches a paste like consistency in order to get a fluffy, light filling.  (See photo above)

Chinese, pork, cabbage, Jiaozi, jiao zi, Dumpling,  recipe, 白菜, 豬肉, 餃子, 白菜豬肉餃子
dumpling,白菜,chinese,cabbage,jiao zi,jiaozi,pork,豬肉,餃子
Pleat the dumpling
dumpling,白菜,chinese,cabbage,jiao zi,jiaozi,pork,豬肉,餃子
Finished dumpling!

And if you're not too sure about your dumpling wrapping skills, check out our How to Wrap a Chinese Jiaozi Dumpling video!  It's short and sweet and to the point, just showing you how to fold the darn things.  

There is a hilarious (to me at least!) back story to this dumpling video. I asked my little girl to hold the camera that day as my two floury hands were needed for dumpling wrapping.  Sure enough, my little girl decided, unprompted, to add her own little voiceover to the video.  If you listen real carefully you can hear me trying not to bust out laughing in the background!
Chinese Boiled Jiaozi Dumpling  Recipe白菜豬肉餃子
(Prep time: 20 mins  Cook time: 9 mins)

Ingredients:


Directions:

Mix pork, salt, soy sauce, sesame oil, rice wine, sugar, white pepper, and water in large mixing bowl.  Stir in one direction for a couple of minutes until the pork mixture stops looking like separated pork pieces and more like a paste.  Add flour and egg white and mix in.  Add the cabbage and stir in one direction until thoroughly mixed, fluffy and smooth.

Prepare working area with dumpling wrappers (keep covered until use), a small bowl of water, pork mixture, and a clean plate for placing of wrapped dumplings.  For each jiaozi, take one dumpling skin and place one scant tablespoon  in middle.  Keeping your fingers dry as possible wrap the jiaozi, (see our video above!)

Once wrapped you can eat right away by cooking in boiling water for 9 minutes.  Any jiaozi you don't eat right away should be immediately frozen.

To freeze line a shelf in the freezer with ceramic wrap and then place the jiaozi on top.  Once completely frozen place into zip lock bags.  These should keep about a month in the freezer, if they last that long.  To cook frozen jiaozi, boil in water for 10 minutes, stirring in the beginning to prevent sticking to the bottom of the pot.

Either cooked from frozen or fresh, scoop out with strainer and serve hot with small dipping plates with either soy sauce or vinegar or a combination of them both.  Hope you like our Chinese Boiled Jiaozi Recipe!

Tip: For napa cabbage pork potstickers, check out our Potsticker Pork Dumplings 鍋貼 post!
Tip*: For vegetarian dumplings, please check out our Vegetarian Plant Based Wontons post!
Tip**: For further photo instructions on dumpling wrapping, see our post on How to Fold a Chinese Dumpling!

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4 comments:

  1. Oooh! These look delicious! I must try my hand at making them. Looking at this recipe, it seems similar to the potsticker pork dumpling you had posted a while back.. are these the same, but different names? Also, can the jiaozi be steamed instead of boiling them?

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    1. Hey! This recipe is a tweak from the original potsticker recipe that we posted. You can use either one to make jiaozi but I'm liking this new recipe more as I like the taste and texture of cabbage, we've tweaked the taste to make it yummier and juicier, and it seems faster to make. You can steam jiaozi for 9 mins, (frozen steam 12 mins) on a plate in your steamer. Hope you like our new recipe! ~ellen

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    2. Hi Ellen,
      I finally had the opportunity to make the jiaozi this weekend and you were right, they are juicy. I like using a mix of soy sauce/ sesame oil as dipping sauce. I think I will try to incorporate some shrimp into the mixture next time.
      Haven't try the potsticker pork dumplings yet, but that will be next...

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    3. Glad you liked our jiaozi recipe! Yum...soy sauce and sesame oil sounds good, must try it! ~ellen

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