4 Levels of Dumplings: Amateur to Food Scientist | Epicurious

Hi, I'm John and I'm a level one chef Hi, I'm Charlene and I'm a level two chef Hi, I'm King, I'm an instructor at the Institute of Culinary Education and I've been a chef for over 20 years, I've never made

dumplings

before. mass. I told my grandmother that I'm here. I'm a little nervous because she'll see this video and she'll judge me very harshly. My grandmother was a pretty good cook. The

dumplings

were always there the entire time. For much of my childhood, the first time I made dumplings was probably when I was four or five years old.

It's not really a recipe. This is by experimentation and it really comes out a little different each time, but I've been making dumplings. For a long time, if it were a perfect world, I would eat thick dumplings every day, but we are not in a perfect world, so today I am very excited to make dumplings. The first thing we're going to do is To make our dumpling wrapper this is all purpose flour use bread flour and it also makes it harder for the dough to break down when you boil it so add a pinch of salt and then I add this room temperature water here.

The hot water will just help the gluten in it make the dough soften a little, so I like to use my fingers this way to fold in the flour and incorporate everything, so I figured a stand mixer would also work. It might be easier for something. so, you know, if you're going to make a big batch of this, you can use a mixer, but I'm a chef and I like to make things with my hands so it's really easy. I bought this pre-made dough. they're essentially dumpling wrappers, I guess I'll go ahead and we'll also add fat to this vegetable oil that will help give this dough a good elasticity so it doesn't dry out, we'll put a towel on top of it, we'll put our dumpling on it, baby. sleep, I'll let our little dumpling sit for 45 minutes covered with a damp towel, so this is a dumpling wrapper, it's essentially what you'd expect, it's a flour-based dough that has been flattened, pressed and then usually refrigerated, very easy to work with, if you buy it frozen you can let it thaw before you are ready to work with them, so now it's been sitting for about 15 minutes and I'm ready to check it out.

Hi, now it's loosened up a little bit, so it's easier for me to knead, but you'll know you're ready when this stovetop surface is relatively smooth like a baby's butt, basically, so now this sits for an hour, so to keep it from drying out, I use a wet towel. Well, we let our dough rest for about 45 minutes at room temperature. I want to form a large donut and the goal here is to make it uniform all over, sprinkle a little flour and now we're going to cut our dough. boy in half I'm going to leave this boy here aside right now we look pretty good in this day and age where time is money I think it's perfectly fine it's not too much work for me I really like to cook so let's cutting our log in half we're going to cut them in half again it's just a process of cutting and then punching and eventually extending we want it to be a lot thinner on the outside and a little bit thicker right here in the middle so this is how it looks you'll see a dumpling wrapper, so I'm going to cover them with a wet paper towel to keep them nice and moist and then over my filling, so first let me take I take care of these green onions and then I'm going to chop the garlic really fine.

Okay, I'm just going to figure this out. I'm going to play with some ginger. I love ginger. I like to use a spoon. I find it a little gentler than using one the peeler will just peel it we just want to microplan our ginger now we're just going to hit it with snow ginger so the cabbage I'm using is the cabbage that has a lot of juice in it that makes sense if you cabbage is very wet, you can pat it dry with a paper towel, but here we are using salt to get the water out of this vegetable, so now that it's in this bowl I add the salt and mix it together, just let it sit for 15 minutes. and this is a good time to assemble the rest of the filling.

I have some ground pork here. You can use ground pork, but I like to use hand-pulled pork and shrimp, since the meat is also ground, you want it to have a similar consistency. We're going to chop our scallions, salt, sugar, another key ingredient is shiitake mushroom oil, sesame oil, soy sauce, if you're worried about salt, you can opt for nuts that are low in sodium and iron. Now we are going to mix everything, our filling is ready. let's make our broth, this is a nice pork leg, say hello to pork leg, you can throw this in there, but you'll miss out on all that beautiful collagen that's in the middle.

This collagen is really important because as we cook that collagen. This makes our broth gelatinous, so we're going to have to chop them up, here we go, that's what we want for a stop and then an egg, but I'm going to beat the egg before I put it into the mixture. Cook chicken legs with wine. We don't do these. We don't have to cut the chicken so now we're going to work with our aromatics that go into our ginger broth, let's do our garlic, whole black peppercorns and salted water, we'll bring it to a boil and then we'll lower it to a simmer and We're going to let it simmer for four hours and now I'm just going to mix it all together.

Some people like to use their hands. Not me. I'm mixing this with my hands. Something I do, some people think is gross, this is another arm exercise. Meatballs are really good soul

food

, so now what I do is I squeeze the excess liquid out of this napa cabbage and I just mix it until it's incorporated, here's our broth and I threw it in. in the refrigerator a couple of hours and I mean you're talking about gelatinous like the broth isn't going anywhere so we're just going to do a nice simple cross hatching across the width this will be the start of a beautiful dumpling thick that's our gelatinized soup ready for our fluffy meatballs, very easy with a lot of ingredients, cut it up, throw it in a bowl, mix it now I'm going to prepare our sauce for our meatballs, which is possibly the most important part of the flavor, this It's probably what grandma would make, maybe a little silly, so I'm making some kind of Sichuan style sauce, this is where my family is from, it's not the most traditional sauce for dumplings in the north, usually the you dip in vinegar and maybe a little bit of ginger back to our ginger we're going to peel this we're going to cut it into juliennes we have our scallions our rice wine vinegar we're going to finely chop a scallion the base of this sauce is these two things that They are homemade so this one, this first one is called future jamio, which means sweet soy sauce.

I love how it comes together and we're going to mix and then this is chili oil, which is where all the spices for the sauce come from, it's just putting things in. together water chili oil sesame oil vinegar pepper grain oil sugar because it sweetens it that's salt and then our scallions but I'm using two cloves here so I really like the flavor of garlic and I think it balances well with a little bit of garlic sauce sweeter soy flavors here and just mix it all together and then taste a little bit and use my pinky and that's it, that's our sauce for our soup dumpling.

This is by far the most fun part, well it's not the most fun part, eating is the most fun part. might be one of the most intimidating parts of the process these are the beautiful balls we made earlier a little bit of flour to start basically push them down so we have like a little flat pancake now let's roll it out it's kind. from origami arts and crafts there is no right or wrong way to do it basically each member of my family does it differently this is our filling that we made earlier our pork filling I'm going to have some of this which is our nice gelatinous broth and I'm going to fold it into our filling.

I like to fill mine to the brim. I like to be pretty aggressive with the amount I put in. Somehow you want to fill your dough ball less. You don't want to fill it too much. use your judgment, you still want to have that perimeter out and now here comes the fun part, we're going to start folding it, pinching it, it's like a nice little purse and then what we're going to do is just twist it at the end. make a pinch make another pinch make another pinch start from the other side and then make it go towards the center again and then seal the middle and since this is like homemade dough I don't need water to seal anything I'm going to do To moisten the edges of the wrapper with a little water, I'm going to fold the middle and then work to seal the edges.

The most important thing is that you just want to shut down Chinese culture. Good luck, it's eight or eighteen, so they say at least. at least 18 curls, I never follow that rule, although look you could just lay on that like a pillow like that, it's adorable and now you have a nice little dumpling, now we're going to cook our dumplings, so we have a wok here with water. a steamer basket we want to line that bamboo, although you don't want to put it directly on the bamboo because if we put it directly on the bamboo, the dough will get sticky as we steam, so I decided to boil mine. the most traditional way to make it in my family in my opinion you get a purer dumpling flavor instead of browning it you get a lot of oil about a tablespoon.

I'm looking for a good sizzle when I drop these bad boys. We're not there yet so we have our lined bamboo basket and now I'm going to fill it with our dumplings and I don't want to overcrowd the pan and once the water starts to boil again I'll add some. to this, um, water to lower the temperature, the reason I do that is because then the outer layer, the filling doesn't cook too much before the inside cooks, just take a look, oh yeah, these bottoms are They are getting nice and golden, we have raw pork here. we want to make sure it's fully cooked.

I like to leave it there for eight to ten minutes, kind of like a mini wet oven, a natural oven. We're just going to add a quarter cup of water. We lower the lid of the fire. and I'm going to let these steam for about three to five minutes, the steaming in the bamboo basket imparts that bamboo flavor, it's steaming, the meat is cooking, everything looks good, you know , knock on wood, but I think I knocked it out of the park. since they are fresh, they are not frozen, they are ready very quickly, the meatballs are ready, so now to place them on the plate, so here I have my meatballs, I have some chives, a little cilantro and also my previously made meatball sauce .

Wow, they really stick to the Here down there no wonder they're called stickers, here we go, even after all these years, chopsticks are still sometimes a struggle, some, you know, they're a little beat up, what a dipping sauce, oh my god, I feel great because now it's time for the best part. and here are my dumplings and here are my minced pork dumplings and shrimp and naba cabbage and these are my dumplings this is the fun part this is what we've all been waiting for at least well this is what I have been waiting now we can eat it well, it is very good, great, yes, it is quite good, it is a thick dumpling, it tastes like I remember it, it tastes like my childhood, it tastes like home.

I would definitely serve this to my grandmother, I think she would be very proud. My favorite part about dumpling is knowing how many hours, how many hours I put into it, it's all worth it in the end, now that I'm in New York, every time I miss home, I like to do this, it came out very nice, nothing exploded . The pockets are tightly closed The pork has the right amount of fat The sauce is great It's great It's a winner The meatballs are a delicious package of salty, sweet and sour flavors, expertly balanced Let's see how each of our chefs made the His John used a store-bought wonton wrapper that was already shaped and sized to accommodate his filling.

These wraps are versatile, convenient, and made essentially with flour and water. They have some additional ingredients that act as preservatives like sodium propionate and sodium benzoate along with salt and citric acid. They may also contain L-cysteine, which is an essential amino acid necessary for gluten formation and acts as a dough conditioner, which is one of the structural components of dumpling wrappers. They also help make the dough flexible and really easy to work with when time is money, I think. It's perfectly fine Charlene made her own dumpling skin by mixing bread flour which has a higher percentage of gluten, gluten and gliadin proteins with just under 50 water by weight and a pinch of salt.

It's not much work for me. I really like to cook, so this flour to water ratio ensures that the gluten proteins are fully hydrated and flexible enough to fill and curl. Charlene also took time to rest the dough, which allows for complete hydration of the starch and proteins and for theproteins relax making the dough nice and pliable. Their dumpling skins were made from a low protein all-purpose flour, as the name implies, all-purpose flour is milled and processed with a wide range of functionalities in mind. It had a lower ratio of flower to water, but used hot water, which caused the starch molecules to start gelatinizing, which is what we want, adding a small amount of oil adds richness but also coats the flour preventing complete gelatinization of the starch and producing a very tender and slightly shiny dough.

John's filling is simple, clean and expresses traditional Asian flavors by blending garlic, ginger, scallions. soy sauce and sesame oil with ground pork and napa cabbage napa cabbage is a cruciferous vegetable that has an oblong shape with tight, slightly wrinkled leaves it has a mild flavor grandma would use chinese cabbage the way cabbage is prepared has an effect on flavor, John cut his napa cabbage, which has been found to release flavor compounds such as isothiocyanates from its precursor molecules, increasing the prominence of the pleasant cabbage flavor. Charlene used a combination of shrimp and pork along with rehydrated shiitake mushrooms that add an earthy, woodsy, and meaty flavor. the glutamic acid present also added sesame oil which has a distinctive salty charlene nutty flavor its napa cabbage which draws out much of the water through osmosis this removes water from the mixture too much water dilutes the flavors and creates excess steam and creates a very The king of soggy stuffing made a pork stuffing with shoulder meat, it is a little darker than pork loin because it has almost double the iron content.

He also added garlic and ginger. Play with some ginger. I love ginger cooked together. Garlic and ginger have a wonderful aroma. John made a sauce that enhances his filling with familiar Asian flavors it is a mixture of savory liquids in which the sugar will dissolve balancing the salty, sour and umami notes this is probably what grandma would make, maybe a little silly Charlene increased the complexity of your sauce with In addition to sweet soy sauce, it is called fuchsia, which means sweet soy sauce, which is usually a little more viscous, darker and sweeter than regular soy sauce because sugar has been added. fermented palm.

It also included black vinegar. Most commercially processed vinegars are standardized to five percent acetic acid. some wine vinegars have a slightly higher percentage. Black Chinese vinegars may have only two percent acetic acid, so it is not as acidic as the vinegar you may have in your pantry. On the other hand, she compared chili oil that gets its heat from the capsaicinoids in the infused oil. Pepper oil gets its heat from the sensual alpha hydroxyl, which is associated with the Szechuan peppers from which pepper oil is made. Szechuan peppers are spicy, fruity, citrusy and slightly numbing. King kept her sauce simple because she prepared a gelatinous soup as an ingredient for her meatballs.

The sauce is soy rice vinegar, which is less acidic and has some sweetness. Sliced ​​ginger and chives for a slight grassy green note that adds some color to your dark sauce. The king's soup includes

food

for chicken, pork loins and legs, it has a high content of insoluble proteins. Collagen as it is heated hydrolyzes and transforms into a soft, water-soluble protein gelatin that takes the shape of a solid when cooled, adding viscosity and a thicker mouthfeel to a super sauce. The three chefs assembled their dumplings into a round dumpling shape. skins and stuffed them with raw filling John sealed his dumplings with water emphasizing the importance of a good seal.

Most importantly, you just want it to close. Charlene used a rolling cutter to make the dough mask into individual dumpling discs and added a little flour. Before filling to act as a thickening agent for any excess moisture in the filling, the king used a small thin rolling pin to make his discs, simply rolled them, added some of the filling along with the gelatinous soup and pleated and pinched the edges closed . Not only does the edges create a beautiful dumpling, but it is also functional because it is a great way to seal the edges. It's like a nice bag.

The three chefs used different cooking methods for their dumplings. John sauteed the bottom of his dumplings to add color and crunchy texture then added water and covered his pan causing his dumplings to steam. Charlene simmered her dumplings in water just below boiling point. This is the most traditional way in my family to do it. Boiling occurs at 212 degrees Fahrenheit every time water boils. Charlene added a small amount of cold water which kept the temperature consistently just below boiling point by reducing the boiling action, the water is less turbulent and therefore less likely to cause the meatballs to open.

King used a traditional bamboo steamer. Bamboo steamers are flat interlocking baskets that are stackable with a lid on top, this is a gentle way to cook the dumplings, minimizing the chance of them exploding. By steaming in the bamboo basket, that king of bamboo flavor is imparted. He lined his steamer with napa cabbage leaves that turn a beautiful bright green color when initially heated, the green pigment called chlorophyll in cabbage loses molecular water and expresses the green color very clearly and brightly. It's a beautiful way to serve these tender and delicious meatballs found in many cuisines around the world.

Meatballs can be prepared using a wide variety of methods. like stir-frying or steaming, we hope you'll be inspired by our chefs the next time you want to dive into dumplings.