6 year shares his grandmother’s authentic potsticker recipe for Chinese New Year!

Happy Chinese Lunar New Year! My son Gabriel is very eager to start sharing cooking videos on his YouTube channel, so what better way to celebrate the Year of the Tiger than to let him share my mother’s family recipe for making authentic dumplings from scratch. Some of my fondest childhood memories involve the family getting together and making dumplings together. Now that both of my parents have passed, we figured it was time to get Gabriel involved in the family tradition. He shares the technique on his YouTube channel, linked below. Like and subscribe, and you will see some pretty interesting content from one precocious kindergartener. Enjoy!

Here’s the full recipe:

Potstickers Recipe

Wrappers:

2 cups all-purpose flour

3/4 cup very hot water

Filling

8 oz ground pork

1 cup shredded cabbage

1/4 cup chopped chives and/or green onions

1/4 cup chopped water chestnuts

1/2 teaspoon minced garlic

1 teaspoon soy sauce

1/2 teaspoon sesame oil

1/2 teaspoon rice wine

Dipping Sauce

3 tablespoons soy sauce

3 teaspoons rice vinegar

Sriracha or chili paste to taste

Slivers of chopped ginger

For cooking:

1 tablespoon cooking oil

1/4 cup water

Wrapper Dough Preparation:

In a large bowl combine the flour and the hot water. Stir the flour vigorously with a large spoon until you get a mealy, crumbly mixture. When cool enough, use your hands to knead to dough in the bowl. Knead for about 5-10 minutes to form a large ball that is smooth and easy to shape. The dough should not be sticky to your fingers at this point. If it is, add flour until it isn’t. Place the ball back into the bowl, and cover with a damp paper towel and a lid. Let the dough rest for at least 30 minutes or more while you make the filling.

Filling Preparation:

In a large bowl, combine all the ingredients and mix together until well-blended and set aside until ready to use. Feel free to vary the amounts and types of ingredients to your liking. It’s also helpful to make a small meatball with the mixture and cook it to make sure it’s tasty before investing all the time into wrapping a bland or too salty mixture.

Roll out the wrappers

The wrappers are critical to the success of your potstickers. If you didn’t grow up making them, it may be hard to master, but it’s definitely worth a try. Maybe buy some round dumpling wrappers at the Asian grocery in the freezer section as backup. You’ll have to use water as “glue” for the edges when folding the store bought variety, but they work just as well (but not quite as chewy and delicious as homemade, if made correctly). But they’ll really save you time, and will likely be better than your batch for the first several times you make them until you get the hang of it.

Sprinkle flour on your prep area. Take the rested dough and form a large donut about 1 inch thick. Cut it into 1 square inch pieces, and roll out circular pieces that are thin and about 4 inches in diameter, with the edges slightly thinner than the middle. If you don’t have a helper, roll then fold each one immediately so the rolled wrappers don’t dry out. It really helps to do this as a family (or at least with 2 people) so one person rolls while the others fold.

Fold the Potstickers:

Watch the video for the folding technique, but place about 2 teaspoons of filling to the center of each wrapper, fold it up into a semicircle, then pinch the tops together tightly. Watch the video for the pleating technique that makes them prettier, and helps them stand up. The important thing is to make sure to not overfill them, and the make sure the dumplings are sealed together well.

Dipping Sauce Preparation:

Mix the ingredients together. Once again, it’s your sauce, so vary the ingredients to your taste.

Cook the Potstickers:

Cover the bottom of a non-stick frying pan with a thin layer of cooking oil and heat to high. Carefully place the potstickers in the pan barely touching each other and fry for 2-3 minutes until the bottoms start to brown. Carefully add 1/4 cup of water to the pan and avoid the splattering oil. Cover the pan with a lid immediately. Cook for approximately 5-6 more minutes, until the water has evaporated and the dumplings are fully cooked. This recipe makes about 25-30 dumplings, so depending on the size of your pan, you may need to fry in separate batches.

Alternatively, you can boil your dumplings in lightly salted water for about 8 minutes, or until all the dumplings float.

Transfer to a plate and serve with the dipping sauce.

Happy New Year! Enjoy!