potstickers

growing up, it was a tradition in my family to make dumplings together on sunday afternoon, sometimes with the latest nba or nfl playoffs in the background. it was a full family affair, starting with the four of us when my sister was a baby, and with all five of us once she was old enough to recruit into child labor. 

we made hundreds of dumplings every sunday! and we had a process in place so that we could make them as quickly as possible and get them inside our bellies.

the entire dining room table was covered in a layer of flour, and my father was in charge of preparing and kneading the dough. he would set aside under a wet paper towel for an hour before use, while my mom prepared the filling, which usually consisted of ground pork, chives, dried shrimp, soy sauce, sesame oil, cooking wine, and salt. when the dough had set and was ready to be worked with, my dad would shape it into a long 1.5" thick rope which he could cut into 1" pieces for my mom to roll out. my mom would use a wooden rolling pin to roll out each piece into dumpling wrappers.

my brother and i were the wrappers: with each wrapper that my mom rolled out, we would fill it with a spoonful of the filling, shape the wrapper with filling in it into a dumpling, and place it on one of the many cookie sheets my parents had prepared beforehand. these pans would then be put into the freezer so we could have some dumplings for a mid-week quick and easy dinner.

the wrapping was never the difficult part, but the dough preparation, kneading, and rolling out was. now that we've found a couple of great dumpling wrapper options at h-mart (thanks you, rose!) and from twin marquis, we can make them pretty easily in under an hour.

and the best thing of cooking EXTRA dumplings the first night? frying them into potstickers the next night!! :D