Dumpling engineering: How to cook pot stickers

Here is the procedure for frying pot stickers, a kind of fried dumpling (In Chinese, they are called Guo Tie, which is pronounced gwor tee-ay and written 鍋貼)

1) Turn on the heat and dry the frying pan.

2) Put about a tablespoon of oil into the pan, turn down the heat so you have time to put the dumplings side-by-side in the pan.

3) Turn the heat up to medium. Gradually you will notice the bottom of the dumplings becoming brown and a little crispy.

4) Add water right on top of the dumplings. Then cover the pan with a lid, and turn the heat high.

4.1) If you are cooking fresh dumplings, you usually need only half a cup of water for 10 to 12 dumplings. But if you are cooking frozen, add more water, and allow more time for the dumplings to be cooked.

5) Before the water in the pan is all dried out and evaporated, turn the heat low. At this stage you will see there is still some water around the dumpling. Now we want the bottom of the dumpling to get cooked gently and nicely -- not to get burned too much.

6) Serve the dumplings upside down.



Here are some more tips. These are from our former student, Oscar, who shared with us his experience making dumplings at home after the class:

- When shaping the dough with a rolling pin, I must use flour on the work surface to prevent dough sticking to the rolling pin or the surface.
I think I may have not let the dough cool enough or not kneaded long enough. (I remember you talking about this during the course... but not remembering how important this is)
This would mean there is more flour on the outside of the dumplings.

- Today I used a spoonfull of sunflower oil to start the frying process. Unfortunately, I think this must have been a bit too much as the fried dough tastes too much like a doughnut!

- I think the clues you gave about the low-, medium- and high heat are very useful. Also the fact that I still need a cover (lid) makes a lot of difference.
I had assumed that, yet at the same time I assumed that if you want the water to evaporate, leaving the cover open would work better. I ended up frying without a cover, on low heat (to increase cooking time) and my dough came out undercooked. Today's batch was much better in this aspect.

- Switching off the heat before all the water evaporates is probably also important, but difficult because it depends on how much heat remains in the pan and probably some other factors.  Turn it down too soon and the bottom will remain wet, turn it down too late and you end up with burnt dough.



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