Secret Chinese Dumpling Recipe with Chef Brian Tsao

dumplings is a lot more than just tradition it's a family affair before we do anything the very first thing we're gonna have to do is make the dough the reason why we need to make the dough first is because after it's been mixed we have to let the dough relax for a minimum of an hour so i'm putting in two cups of flour into a large bowl large bowl just a really quick tip when you're working in the kitchen you generally want to use a bowl that's much bigger than what you actually think you need this will give you room to work with the product if the bowl

is bigger than the actual product you're working with when you spin it when you move it around when you mix it you have plenty of room without all this stuff flying out we're gonna put half a teaspoon of kosher salt and half a cup of water this is a little bit more than half i always like to have a little extra just in case we're gonna pour that water right inside this dough and we're gonna mix it right inside of this bowl so we don't make a mess on our table mixing the dough in a bowl like this is exactly how i saw it being made when i was living in

beijing china they would mix it in here develop the gluten and let it rest covered for about an hour as i mentioned earlier there really isn't a recipe everyone just kind of does it by eye this is everything from the dough to the filling it's all by feel it's one of those unexplainable things of home style cooking that you can't replicate in a kitchen so despite me having 16 years of experience in the restaurant business making dumplings is extra special for me from what i'm feeling here by touching it i can feel that it's getting a little stiff and it

hasn't absorbed all this product so i'm actually going to punch this down and just add in a touch more water not much water not much not much the way you know your gluten is developing properly is when you squeeze the dough the dough does it return back to its shape and you can see i'm squeezing it and it doesn't really doesn't really return back to its original shape so i know that i need to give this a little bit more bit more development development now you can also do this in the mixer it'll be much quicker and easier but this is authentic dumplings

shown to me by old chinese ladies i'm not going to dishonor them by bringing a mixer into the picture everything's absorbed out of the bowl and now you can see you can see it's starting to return back to its original shape original shape when i squeeze it so it means i'm getting good getting good gluten development punch that dough it's returning to its original shape or almost so i know this dough is pretty much ready we're going to put this into the bowl and i'm going to cover it and come back to it an hour later while we're waiting for the dough to

rest we can start making our filling earlier i already chopped up my cabbage i'll show you that b-roll right now just note that this is a bit more cabbage than what it shows in the recipe that's because well i have to make extra for the entire family this is probably the easiest part because all we have to do is add in our pork and all the other ingredients it's pretty much that easy i just added the scallion putting in some chopped ginger which i also minced up earlier in the day day soy sauce soy sauce sesame oil and this right here is probably a

completely and totally underrated ingredient what ingredient do you ask that is it's not soy sauce it's not ginger it's not scallion those aren't secrets anyway the secret i'm showing you right now that secret is white pepper powder and it goes a little bit goes a long way so you definitely want to be careful about this we're going to put in a little bit of rice wine finally we're gonna crack two eggs in there eggs in there the eggs act as a binding agent now we mix it up mix it up i'm gonna just do it by hand we wanna just keep mixing until all the

ingredients are incorporated together i can smell the ginger the rice wine the white pepper or the sesame oil that is ready to go ready to go and we're gonna put this into the fridge for me making dumplings is a family affair so it means uh for me for me our dough has now rested for an hour it's been covered so it doesn't form a skin i just have some all-purpose flour here i'm gonna line our tray just a little bit of flour just enough just enough to work with it i also know that my dough is ready because when i push onto it it's not bouncing back to its

original shape the indentation is staying there meaning the gluten has relaxed and our dough is going to be much easier to work with i'm now cutting the dough into strips and then we're gonna roll out these strips strips just like that so now we're cutting this dough into pucks they're about three quarters of an ounce per piece just pushing these little pucks flat i'm kind of going with its original cylindrical shape cylindrical shape pushing that down this is just going to help us when we start to roll the dough the next tool we're going to need is a

very fancy and special tool it is called a guan a guan right there and the direct translation of gwen to english is stick that's right we got a magical stick stick so this next part of rolling out the dumpling skins it does take a little bit of practice and getting used to if you don't want to make your own dumpling skins from scratch you can easily go to the supermarket and buy pre-rolled dumpling wrappers this is the fun part for me for me is rolling out the dumpling wrapper and and you want to keep some flour close by because as you work with it it is

going to get sticky to get sticky and you want to roll these out to a circular shape you got that you got that we're just going to keep going and with the magic of editing we've completed rolling all of our dough in a matter of seconds so to prevent the dumpling wrappers from drying out and forming that gross nasty skin i'm actually going to put it into a produce bag to keep it covered you don't have to use a produce bag you can use plastic wrap wrap i just find this to be the neatest way so here we have our pork filling that's been sitting in the fridge

while we rolled this out i just have a simple butter knife and now we start to pack the dumplings now i'm taking about a little over a tablespoon's worth of filling in there and the easiest way to do this really is just folding it over wrapping it up with a little bit of pressure and just like that we have a very traditional simple northern style pork and cabbage dumpling i think i am making many old ladies in china very proud of me we're going to keep going until we finish all our wrappers wrappers as i mentioned earlier making dumplings is a family

affair so typically around a big table you'll have one person rolling the skins and you'll have a few people actually putting the dumplings together while they're doing this the family's talking catching up and everyone is having so much fun before you know it you have hundreds of dumplings all over the place and just like that we got our dumplings wrapped up now what's great about this is you can either freeze this and eat it at a later day or best case scenario you eat it fresh for the remainder of the filling you just cover it up put it in the fridge

if you're not going to use it within a day or two you can put it into the freezer and make dumplings again later but i want to get these cooking right now so let's get a pot of water going so we can have some fresh dumplings dumplings our water is now at a boil and we are going to start cooking our dumplings now remember before we start cooking i know this looks like a big pot or a medium sized pot but you do not want to add in too many dumplings at one time the water is at a boil but when you start to add the dumplings into this boiling water it's

actually going to cool down the water so remember don't add too many at one time of course the bigger pot you have the more water you have boiling the more dumplings you can cook at the same time now really important once you've added in the dumplings in the dumplings you do want to give it a little movement just so that it doesn't stick to the bottom or stick to each other now that i've given it a little bit of movement i could just let it sit and cook for maybe about 10 to 15 minutes the fresher they are then the quicker that it will cook now while we

wait for this to cook i am going to put together my favorite condiments to go with my dumplings number one being number one being this tiang vinegar this vinegar is probably the go-to vinegar when you have dumplings i'm gonna put in about i don't know two tablespoons worth i should mention i should mention i do have some raw garlic in this bowl just one clove rough chopped now my personal all-time favorite condiment for dumplings is lao kan ma chili oil i love love love this chili oil i have to have it when i eat dumplings so together with the xiang

vinegar with some raw garlic and this stuff you are in for a treat my friends for me this stuff the more the better i'm gonna put in about a tablespoon and a half's worth now you can go nuts with condiments i know that it's very common uh from chinese restaurants to get some kind of like soy sauce that's a little sweet you can add some sugar in here you can put cilantro scallion whatever you want but for me personally it's just the chili oil vinegar raw garlic that's all it needs our dumplings are finally ready i'm gonna pull them out of this pot i'm

gonna make sure i drain all of that excess water and for me personally i like to put it straight into the condiment so here with my chili oil the garlic and everything garlic and everything i'm just gonna put these cooked dumplings right on top of that oh man i cannot wait to dig into this this is looking freaking delicious we're not done yet let's garnish this a little bit all right we got some fresh scallion on there we got some beautiful colors of the red with the chili oil we got the scallions let me give you a little close-up shot of this let's

let's get a little gopro action going on here look at that at that oh my goodness i cannot wait to dig into this and you know what i'm gonna have a bite for the camera right now i got a piece here with a lot of chili oil let's take a bite into this oh my gosh oh my gosh this is transporting me right back to my days in beijing i hope you had just as much fun as i had making these dumplings i hope you share it with your friends your family like i said you can make a bunch of them freeze them and eat them for later guys i am chef ryan sound not your typical

chef and i'll see you really soon