Laura's Apicius: Pork and Kimchi Dumplings

I absolutely love potstickers. Or are they dumplings? Potstickers? Who cares... they're tasty, bite-sized, and can be cooked from frozen!!

I was super-intimidated by this recipe because I am sooo bad at making dough. Bread dough, pie dough, pizza dough.... name a dough, I've screwed it up.

I was convinced it would fail. But hey, I'm an academic scientist.... I'm getting very, very comfortable with the concept of failure :)

First, I made the dough. EASIEST DOUGH RECIPE EVER. Literally, flour + water = dumpling dough. How could I screw this one up, you might ask? Well, here's how - I can't leave anything alone... I decided to do half white flour, half whole wheat. Why? Obviously because I like screwing things up :)

But it worked anyway!! ...amazing....

Step 1: mix flour and water until a wet dough forms, knead it for 5min, let rest on the counter for 15min while you prepare the filling.

Step 2: Prepare filling. Use whatever you want, just mix it together and add an egg. I chose ground pork and kimchi (monster jar in the fridge!). I also added some garlic, ginger, S&P.

Step 3: After dough has rested for the allotted 15min, divide in half. Roll each half into a "snake" and cut into 12 pieces (kinda like making gnocchi). Roll each piece into a ball, like so:

Step 4: Roll out each ball into a thin circle (maybe 3"?) and plop 1 tbsp of your filling in the middle.

Step 5: Bring one side over to the other and pinch the seam to seal the dumpling together.

Step 6: Last but never least! Heat some vegetable oil in a skillet over hight heat, add dumplings and fry until the bottoms are lightly browned. Then, and here's the scary part, add about a 1/4 cup of water and cover the skillet to let the dumplings steam until the insides are cooked through. Then (even scarier) take the lid off and finish browning the dumplings until golden brown and delicious. Prepare to clean oil splatters off your range for days.

I made a dipping sauce using low-sodium soy sauce, rice vinegar, a splash of mirin (not necessary) and a splash of hot chili sesame oil (also not necessary, but I love the heat - regular sesame oil would be great too).