Pork and Cabbage Dumplings

For this week’s cooking expedition, it’s going back to our roots: dumplings! Six’s family makes their own dumplings often, so this was more his expertise. (Fish doesn’t really know how to make dumplings, even though her parents are pretty good at wontons.) We decided on a classic flavor: pork and cabbage. Dumplings are great, we thought, so we should make a lot and freeze some for later! Our goal was about 80 dumplings, or maybe a little less. Little did we know the messes to follow.

In preparation for making a lot of dumplings, we bought four heads of Napa cabbage and 1.5 kg of minced pork, in addition to an array of spices, like garlic and ginger. We also had to buy the skins, since we didn’t want to make it (Fish is inexperienced), but we didn’t realize they were frozen. Thankfully, making the filling gave it more than enough time to defrost.

One of the messiest parts was squeezing the water out of the cabbage, which we blended up with a food processor (borrowed from a different kitchen). Fish didn’t even know this step existed, so it was quite a surprise to see Six towel-strangling the minced cabbage. It produced a swamp of cabbage juice and remains that we stomped down the sink drain. Ew. But the product was pretty decent, and we reduced the volume of cabbage by about 80 percent. It was time for dry cabbage to meet fatty pork.

Next, we battled the massive amount of filling and added scallions, ginger, garlic, white pepper, salt, soy sauce, and sesame oil. Stirring the whole thing was quite a feat, and Fish didn’t put enough salt or oil (we accidentally only used half the recommended amount), but it turned out almost okay.

Finally, we got to actually wrapping up the dumplings! The skins were almost completely defrosted, so that wasn’t too bad. We prepared a water bowl and some spoons and got wrapping. Fish wasn’t sure how to make a dumpling, so a lot of hers were bursting at the seams and/or would not close up. Six showed her some videos and demoed a few times, and Fish eventually got it (after a lot of failures, though). Apparently, the trick is to not put too much filling.

While we were wrapping, Six got hungry and steamed some of the ugly dumplings that we made earlier, since they definitely wouldn’t hold if boiled. We even shared some with a friendly Swiss neighbor, who in return, gave us a few slices of the best olive bread we’ve ever had. And so, we whittled away at the filling, making trays and plates of dumplings. We filled two trays and an entire plate.

Somehow, there was still a lot of filling left, but we ran out of wrappers, so Six had to run to the rip-off Asian store to buy two more packs. Unfortunately, they were stone cold frozen solid, so we had to wait for them to soften. In the meantime, we had a meal out of some of the dumplings we already made! We boiled the nice ones and pan-fried the ugly ones. They all actually tasted pretty good, especially with the garlic and soy sauce mix that Six made. We couldn’t actually finish everything we cooked, so we gave some away to more friendly neighbors.

Finally, we finished the mess we started and wrapped the rest of the dumplings, stuffed them in the freezer, and called it a day. Below is an aesthetic shot of our creations.

So, we learned to not be greedy, since we ended up actually making about 160 dumplings, and we had some leftover wrappers (which we made noodles from).