Japanese pan-fried gyoza 餃子

Growing up, ever since I was in grade school, I helped my mom wrap gyoza stuffing in its wrappers for a weeknight dinner. This here is the traditional recipe for pork gyoza. For the new, trendy way to cook gyoza, check out my next blog post (8/14)!

Perfectly steamed on the inside, crispy browned on the outside. That's the perfect gyoza dumpling.

Rarely, do I ever make wrappers from scratch. Is it worth it? Hm, it's a bit like wondering if making pie crust from scratch is worth it. If you've never had it, you'd ask why go through the trouble? (Even Ina says go with a ready-made crust.) If you're a purist, you wouldn't have it any other way. Either way, you can decide. These wrappers can be purchased at an Asian market, or these days, depending on your neighborhood demographics, even at Whole Foods.

Ingredients for making the wrapper:

• 140 g cake flour 薄力粉
• 70 mL water, lukewarm at 40 degrees C/104 degrees F 水
• potato starch 片栗粉

I mix the cake flour and water together in a small bowl. It starts to clump together, eventually into a sticky ball. If I pinch a small piece of it, it feels like... well, it feels like if you were to pinch your ear lobe, gummy but soft - then I know it's ready. I wrap it up and chill it in the fridge for a half hour to an hour. 

Napa cabbage

Ingredients for the stuffing:

• 200 g ground pork (just under 1/2 pound of pork) 豚肉
• 300 g napa cabbage (about 3 big leaves) 白菜
• 3 Tbsp scallion or preferably nira ニラ
• 2 tsp fresh ginger, minced or finely chopped 生姜
• 1 tsp salt 塩
• 2 Tbsp soy sauce 醤油
• 1 tsp garlic, minced にんにく
• 1 Tbsp sake (rice wine) 酒
• 1 Tbsp cooking oil 野菜油 
• 2 Tbsp sesame oil  ごま油

Don't have napa cabbage? Common green cabbage is an ok substitute. In fact, I almost never follow exactly the recipe for the stuffing. That's the fantastic part about these stuffed goodies.

 

A few Napa cabbage leaves, chopped

I'll replace nira with scallion, add some of this, subtract some of that... The important parts of the stuffing is that (1) I want an ingredient like an oily ground meat that binds the stuff together; (2) ingredients like napa cabbage are the perfect veggie when the inside of the wrapper gets steamed - the cabbage becomes sweeter and imparts moisture inside the wrapper for that juicy texture when you bite into the dumpling; (3) zest! Don't lose the condiments, including the fresh ginger. The combination of sesame oil, sake, soy sauce and ginger in this stuffing is unmistakably the signature taste.

Ok and one last argument, for the sake. When the pork and sake hit each other, it's like... wham! In Japanese, the taste that the sake unleashes in the pork is called umami 旨味. I don't remember ever a time my mom skipped out on the sake when she cooked pork. It's a beautiful marriage.

Once all the ingredients are in a bowl, I mush it together.

A good mixing makes sure that each dumpling will have all of the tastes stuffed inside it.

Back to the wrappers. . .

My wrapping dough comes out of the fridge, onto the board. I get lots of starch ready cuz I'm going to need it.

I roll the entire ball of dough into a long log. It's about the same thickness as if you were rolling out a pretzel, maybe an inch in diameter. Once that's done, I cut off a small piece (maybe 1" x 1") and that's going to be one wrapper!

The small piece of dough turns into the first wrapper. I first whack it with the palm of my hand, then I gently roll it out with a small roller (here, I'm using an "udon" rolling pin). You know what, no one ever said that it has to be a perfect circle. Perfect is no fun, anyhow. So my wrappers are all "mostly" circular. I like to make all of my wrappers before moving onto stuffing them. Stuffing the wrappers can be a messy affair and I prefer an orderly process.

Before I start, I grab a small bowl of water for wetting the tip of my finger. More on that in a bit.

Just a teaspoonful of stuffing goes into the center of the wrapper. It's easiest to start with the wrapper in the palm of your hand (I'm a righty so it's in my left hand). Once the stuffing's on board, I take a little bit of water from the small bowl. I only need to wet the tip of my index finger to get half of the outer rim of my wrapper moist.

Next, the goal is to fold the dumpling in half with the stuffing in the middle. Closing the palm of my hand half way to help the folding, I use my right hand to lift the bottom half of the wrapper toward the top half. As I do, I start putting little creases into the edge of the wrapper so that it closes with a fluted edge. It looks like a pleated skirt when it's all folded up.





If I'm not making homemade wrappers on an occasion, I make sure that in my small bowl of water, I add a little bit (1/2 tsp) of starch so that the starch helps hold the wrapper closed.

To the left, my homemade wrappers stuffed with the pork stuffing. Below, these are store-bought wrappers filled with the same pork stuffing. Yes, I know, the store bought ones are perrrrrfect and beautiful, compared to the homemade. Let's just say that homemade is intended to have that rustic feel.


Is it time to eat yet? Let's get these onto the frying pan!

I heat up the pan with some cooking oil. I want a non-flavorful oil like a basic vegetable oil or one of those lower-cost olive oils (the more expensive / EVOOs tend to be more flavorful so I want to avoid that).

My gyoza dumplings go on the frying pan in batches of three or four right next to each other. Don't ask me why... it just is done that way. They're always served kind of stuck together. It's like there's something weird about gyoza if they aren't connected. Anyway, it makes them flippable in batches and that makes it easier.

The heat's right about at medium on the pan.

A few minutes of browning on one side and then they get flipped. I did promise earlier that they are crispy on the outside, steamy-juicy on the inside. Here's the trick.

Once they're flipped over, I add a small amount of water (a couple of tablespoons to the pan) and cover the pan with a lid. Immediately, the steam starts screaming out of the sides of the lid and I can hear the water and oil dancing around inside.

It's another good few minutes. When the steam coming out of the sides of the pan lid subsides and there's not much sound emanating from the pan, I know the steaming is complete.

As I remove the lid, there's a little bit of water still trying to make its escape. I let it continue to cook so that all of the water is evaporated and to get a crispy bottom on my gyozas.

All that work is about to pay off.

I grab my soy sauce, rice vinegar and hot sesame oil (this is rayu ラー油, a bit different from the sesame oil I used in the stuffing) and mix it in a small dish. I have friends who've gone their entire lives using only soy sauce and vinegar in their dipping sauces. But if you're a spice-lover like me, the rayu is a must-have. These days you can find rayu with pepper flakes in it. If not, I grab the shichimi (7-spice pepper) and give it a few shakes.

The hot, crispy, gyoza dumplings go into the dipping sauce... and into my mouth.