If you cook Chinese food, and if you are in fact, Chinese, at some point you’ll have to attempt making potstickers.  My mother has made them, I’m sure my grandmothers made them, and now finally, I’ve given it a shot.

The conclusion: They’re not easy.

I remember watching my mom make potstickers when I was a kid.  What a laborious process: forming the dough, rolling it out with a whap whap whap! of the rolling pin, stuffing the pieces with filling and crimping each dumpling by hand (to feed a family of four, that’s a lot of crimping).  It took time.  This was a weekend dish, not something mom would do on a Wednesday night.

Here’s how you do it.  This is a recipe I followed from Eileen Yin-Fei Lo’s The Chinese Kitchen cookbook.

(I’m listing the full recipe which makes 36 dumplings.  For my purposes, I halved everything, since I knew producing 36 dumplings at my turtle speed would take from dusk till dawn.)

Filling:
3/4 lb bok choy, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
10 ounces lean ground pork
1 scallion, minced
2 tsp sugar
1 1/2 tsp minced ginger
1 1/2 tsp sherry or Chinese cooking wine
1 tsp soy sauce
2 tsp sesame oil
1 medium egg, beaten
1 tbsp oyster sauce
2 tbsp cornstarch

Dough:
2 cups flour
7/8 cup cold water

You start by blanching the bok choy.  Add 1 tsp salt and 1/2 tsp baking soda to a pot of boiling water, add the bok choy stalks, and cook for 1 minute.  Add the leaves, cook for another minute, then drain.  Dry the bok choy thoroughly by squeezing it in paper towels.

Combine all the filling ingredients.  (The recipe says to refrigerate uncovered for 4 hours, or covered overnight, but uh, I kind of skipped that part. Possibly why my filling was more watery than it should be.)

For the dough, put the flour in a bowl, make a well in the center, add the water, and knead until smooth.  If the dough’s too dry, add more water.  Cover the bowl with a damp cloth, and set the dough aside for 30 minutes.

Making the dumplings — here’s where it gets interesting… The dough can be pretty sticky, so dust a cutting board generously with flour.  Divide the dough into 3 equal pieces, roll each into a 12-inch cylinder, and cut each cylinder into 12 equal pieces (since I had halved the ingredients I ended up with a total of 18 pieces).

Working with one piece at a time, roll each piece into a 3-inch round. My dough kept sticking to the rolling pin so I floured each piece quite a bit.

Place about 1 1/2 tsp of filling in the center and wet the edges with water.

Then fold into a half moon shape and pleat the edges to seal it. Man, that was tricky!  The dough was so thin and my hands so sticky that I had a hard time making neat pleats.  My pleats were abysmal.  Behold.

You want to press each dumpling into your hand to create the classic crescent shape.  Yeah, I couldn’t do that too well, either.  They’re supposed to look uniform and plump.  Mine resembled sinking submarines or a sickly pod of beluga whales.

To pan-fry, heat up a few tbsps of vegetable oil on medium-high heat in a non-stick or cast iron skillet.  Place the dumplings in (it’s okay if they touch) and cook for about 3 minutes.

Then pour in 1/2 cup cold water and cover.  Cook until the water evaporates.  Lower the heat and cook until the dumplings are browned on the bottom.

My first batch overcooked a bit — the water evaporated so fast that by the time I checked on them, they were blackened on the bottom.

The next batch was better — I checked on them sooner and flipped them over before they got too dark.

I whipped up a quick dipping sauce of rice vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil, ginger, and scallion, and plated these bad boys up.

Okay, so they’re not restaurant worthy, possibly not even grandmother worthy, but they tasted pretty darn great, and that’s what really matters, right?

(Trying to convince myself…)

When it comes down to it, there’s something deeply satisfying and meditative about forming dough and making dumplings from scratch.  My potstickers were ugly, but I felt connected to them, and I felt connected to being Chinese.  It took me forever, but dammit, I made these.

So try making your own batch of potstickers, and let me know how it goes.  If they turn out flabby and amorphous?  Eh, who cares, eat ‘em anyway.  Just means your dumplings have character.