If you just celebrated Chinese New Year on Tuesday (February 1), you might have eaten some dumplings.

You might also have asked yourself if you could make them at home, and how difficult that might be.

The answers are “yes” and “not at all”.

The delicious stuffed dough pockets often served for the Chinese national holiday (which is sometimes called Lunar New Year or Spring Festival) can be steamed, boiled, or fried (when they are often called potstickers) after assembly.

Dumplings (jiaozi in Mandarin) are one of the traditional foods of Chinese New Year (some others are whole steamed fish, spring rolls, and “longevity” noodles). They are usually stuffed with a ground-meat mixture, often pork—though some versions add shrimp and/or finely chopped cabbage, radish, or other ingredients—and served with a soy-based dipping sauce.

The plump pork pillows are usually made the evening of the celebration, for the new year dinner, and are sometimes eaten during both the hour before and the hour after midnight.

Dumplings are considered to be good luck and a harbinger of wealth for the new year, and some people eat prodigious quantities of them during the celebratory meal in order to guarantee prosperity during the coming months.

The Chinese have been making dumplings for at least 1,800 years, especially in the country’s northern regions, where the flexible dough skins are made with wheat flour. (In the south, a more common rice-flour covering is often used).

In Taiwan, an omelette-style egg-based dough is sometimes used, which gives the dumpling a golden hue.

What follows is a somewhat generic pork-dumpling recipe that doesn’t require you to make and roll out the dough yourself. Many supermarkets or specialty stores sell packages of refrigerated premade dumpling or wonton wrappers that work perfectly well. (In Vancouver, Powell Street’s Double Happiness Foods supplies both citywide.)

1 cup raw ground pork (or ground turkey or chicken)

½ cup chopped Napa cabbage (or bok choy)

¼ cup green onions (sometimes sold as scallions)

(Note: fine-chopped celery, mushrooms, bamboo shoots, and shrimp can be substituted/added to the mixture if care is taken to keep proportions about the same. Minced fresh ginger and/or garlic cloves can also be added for flavour, as can a tablespoon of dry sherry.)

Mix the meat and vegetables together in a medium-large bowl until well combined.

Mix the sesame oil and soy sauce in a small separate bowl, then stir in cornstarch until dissolved.

(Note: some people prefer to refrigerate the mixed ingredients for a few hours to combine flavours and allow the cabbage to slightly wilt for ease of stuffing, but this is not necessary to make delicious dumplings.)

Pour the liquid over the meat mixture and lightly work it in/toss to coat.

(Note: always wash hands after handling raw meat, especially chicken.)

Put a large tablespoon of the filling on the centre of a dumpling or wonton wrapper. Wet your finger in a small bowl of cold water and run it around the wrapper edges to help it seal. Then fold the wrapper over the filling (so the dumpling is a half-moon shape if a round wrapper is used, or corner-to-corner for a triangle shape if you have square ones) and pinch all the edges so it stays sealed.

Steam in a steamer basket for eight minutes (place dumplings on a leftover cabbage leaf or some parchment paper to prevent sticking).

Or you can fry them in a pan (do not crowd) with two tablespoons of vegetable oil for one or two minutes, until bottoms are lightly browned. Add one-third of a cup of water and cover tightly, cooking until the water has just about boiled off. Uncover, reduce heat to medium-low, and fry for another minute or two.

Serve with a dipping sauce made with four tablespoons of soy sauce and one and a half tablespoons each of rice wine and rice vinegar. (Chopped green onions can be added to this, as can chili sauce/paste to taste.)

Martin comes from a long and mostly honourable line of journalists, editors, and writers. When not busy crossing the Ts and dotting the Is, he sometimes tries his hand at a little writing. Contrary to popular opinion, he doesn’t really mind dogs at all.

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