Gyoza, Potstickers, Dumplings, Whatever... They're just yummy!

Hello. I'm back. The gyoza came out good. Normally, I don't make it for lunch. I had the stuffing all ready for dinner but when I opened my package of gyoza skin, it had gone bad. Oops! So I bought a pack yesterday and made it just earlier today for lunch. I always like to make extra and freeze it so I can have it as my lunch or dinner or those days when you have unexpectant friends over and want to entertain them. I learned how to make gyoza from my mom. So the basic ingredients and procedure is my mom's way, but I like to experiment with the recipe sometimes especially when I find gyoza recipes in other places. For today's gyoza recipe, approximately...

1/2 head of small cabbage, chopped fine to medium
1/2 yellow onion, chopped
4 stalks of green onion, chopped
1 tsp. butter
1/2 pound ground pork, the fatty kind from the Asian market
1/2 pound ground chicken
1 Tbsp. grated ginger
1 Tbsp. grated garlic
1 egg
1 Tbsp. oyster sauce
1 Tbsp. sesame oil
1 Tbsp. soy sauce
1 Tbsp. chili-garlic sauce
salt and pepper
2 packets of Japanese brand gyoza wrappers

In a wok or frying pan, I sautee the onion in butter and then add the cabbage and green onion. I then add the salt and pepper to taste. I move it away from the hot burner and let it cool down. While it's cooling, I mix together the ground meats, ginger, garlic, egg, oyster sauce, sesame oil, soy sauce and the chili-garlic sauce. You can add more salt or pepper if you want. But with the soy sauce and the oyster sauce, it should be enough. And even if the gyoza filling is not as flavorful as you would have liked, it's alright because you normally dip the dumpling in a sauce anyways. After you make your meaty filling, add the cooled veggie filling to it. If you still really care about how the filling tastes, just boil some water and drop a ball of the filling in it to cook, then eat it to see if you like it.

Now, filling the wrapper... Get a little bowl with some water in it. Using a regular spoon, put a dollop of the filling in the middle of the wrapper. Then, with your finger, wet your finger with that bowl of water and run it all the way along the edge of the wrapper. Now, fold up one half of the wrapper so that it looks like a taco. Pleat one end of the .... Forget it... Just get the plastic gyoza wrapping tool. It's too difficult to explain. Note: I use the Japanese brand gyoza wrappers because that's what I grew up with and the thick wrappers I find to be too doughy for my taste. It's funny, when I was little, I hated the gyoza wrapper, I would peel it off and dip the filling in the sauce and eat it.

Now, the cooking part. I butter the frying pan on high heat, put as many as I can on there, and listen for the sizzle. The bottom should brown a little bit. I then pour about a third cup of water and bring the heat to medium. I then cover it and listen for the sizzle sound again. That's when a lot of the water has cooked off. I take off the cover and put it back on high heat and watch the rest of the water cook off and the gyoza bottom to brown a bit more and become crunchy. Mmmm!!! And when you serve the gyoza, it should be crunchy side up so that it stays that way.

For the sauce, I just mix together grated ginger, lemon juice (or rice vinegar), ichimi tongarashi, ra-yu (chili oil), sesame oil, and soy sauce. All to taste. My mom normally has the ingredients for the sauce out on the dinner table and we each make our own sauce in our dipping bowl the way we like it. A cultural difference I noticed... My family usually has salad or sesame flavored spinach on the side with a bowl of rice... But my husband, being Chinese American, is getting used to the Japanese way of having a bowl of rice with those dumplings. I guess my husband eats those dumplings by itself.

So that's how I make them. Yum!