Chinese New Year, the most importation festival of the year in China, is February 19 this year. And just like many festivals in China and around the world, this holiday is a time for being together with family and sharing good food.
There are so many delicious dishes for Chinese New Year. However, there is one dish from Northern China, which has become increasingly popular for celebrating Chinese New Year: shuǐ jiǎo (boiled dumplings or literally, water dumplings), also called simply jiǎozi. The tradition is to eat shuǐ jiǎo around midnight on Chinese New Year. It’s also traditional for Northern Chinese families to sit together and make dumplings that day.
Our Chinese e-Tutor, Bing, shared this popular and simple recipe for jiǎozi:
Ingredients:
for dough: 200 grams of flour, a teaspoon of salt, and one to two cups warm water
for filling: 500 grams of minced meat, 1000 grams of Chinese cabbage, 2 teaspoons of salt, a half glass of red wine, 1 tablespoon of soy sauce, a bit of black pepper, a bit of mashed green onion and ginger, 1 teaspoon of cooking oil, 1 teaspoon of oyster sauce, 1 teaspoon of sesame oil
for dipping sauce: mashed garlic, Chinese rice vinegar, chili oil
Instructions:
1. Mix flour with a little salt. Slowly add warm water. The dough should look like a round ball and slowly becomes a soft dough. Cover with wet cloth and put aside.
2. Mince the Chinese cabbage. Add one tea spoon of salt and knead by hand, then drain water saving the water for later.
3. Add the red wine, soy sauce, pepper, mashed green onion and grated ginger, cooking oil, oyster sauce and sesame oil into the minced meat. Add a little liquid from the Chinese cabbage, then whip with chopsticks in one direction for five minutes.
4. Add Chinese cabbage into the minced meat and whip with chopsticks in one direction for 10 to 15 minutes. Now the filling is done.
5. Once the filling is done, the dough should be well rested and ready to go. Roll it into a cylindrical strips of 2-3 cm diameter. Cut these strips into 1.5 cm pieces.
6. Flatten the small pieces of dough with your hand and then use a rolling pin to roll the them into dumpling skins of about 4-7 cm in diameter and 0.5-1 cm in thickness. It can be a little thicker in the middle.
7. Put the filling in the middle of the round skin and wrap it. Press the edge together to close it. You can use a little water on the edge to make it sticky.
8. Boil a pot of water. Add a little salt.
9. When the water boils, put the dumplings in. The dumplings will fall to the bottom of the pot at beginning. Stir a little to avoid them sticking on the bottom. Slowly, the dumpling will come to the surface, which means the dumpling skin is cooked.
10. Add a cup of cold water into the pot and bring to a boil again. Repeat two to three times. Then the dumplings are done.
11. Make your own dipping sauce with garlic, Chinese rice vinegar and chili oil.
There are no limits to what you can do with jiǎozi. You can make your own filling and your own shape. For example, you can make easily make a vegetarian filling by substituting the minced meat with tofu, of for another holiday, make a special shape, like a bunny in spring time. It’s up to you! Let us know what kind of jiǎozi you like on our forum. And share your own recipe if you have one!
Photo Credit: Phil Dragash via Compfight cc
