Gyoza - Japanese style dumplins

Gyoza is originally a Chinese dish, which has become very popular across Japan. This recipe shows how to make the gyoza dough and the gyoza filling. The time consuming and difficult part of making of the dough can be skipped by buying premade dough pieces, which are available at some Japanese and Chinese grocery stores.

Ingredients:

(for 30 Gyoza)


Dough:
170 mL water
200 g strong flour

Filling:
200 g ground pork
Cabbage
Nira*: can be substituted by leek or green onion

Leek or Green onion
Garlic
Ginger
Sake*
Soya sauce, salt, and pepper
Sesame oil

Dipping Sauce:
Soya sauce
Vinegar
* This ingredient may not be available in Western supermarkets, but you should be able to find it in Japanese grocery stores that exist in most large European and American cities.

Preparation:

Dough:
1. Mix the water and the flour to a dough that should not be sticky but as soft as an ear lobe.
2. Put a wet towel over the dough, and let it stand for several minutes.
3. Separate the dough in 30 pieces, and form each of them to very thin discs with a diameter of about 10 cm. The middle of each disc should be a little bit thicker than the edge.
Filling:
4. Cut some green, outer cabbage leaves, some green onion (or leek), nira, ginger, and garlic in very small pieces. The amount of these ingredients should equal the amount of meat. Do it as you like.
5. Put some salt on the cabbage, and let it stand for five minutes. Then press the water out of the cabbage pieces.
6. Mix the cabbage, green onion (or leek), nira, ginger, garlic, and the ground pork all together, and add some salt, pepper, soya sauce, sake, and sesame oil. Mix it all very well.
 Making and frying the Gyoza:
7. Put some of the filling onto a piece of dough. Remember that the filling should suffice for 30 gyoza pieces.
8. Moisten the edge of the dough with water. Moisten only a semicircle, not all the way around.
9. Close the gyoza. While closing it, fold the edge about 6 times as shown on the image.
10. Put the gyoza on the table as shown in the image.

11. Fry the Gyoza in a little bit of hot oil until the bottom is brownish, then add water so that the gyoza are in the water with about half of their hight.

12. Keep the high heat and wait until all the water has vaporized. Then remove the gyoza from the heat.

13. Dipping sauce: Mix the same amounts of soya sauce and vinegar together.

Serving and eating:

Eat gyoza pieces after dipping them in the dipping sauce.

General information:

In China dumplins are usually eaten either steamed, fried or in a soup. Japanese gyoza, however, are usually fried. There are many kinds of fillings used, e.g. with different seafood instead of the meat, other vegetable, etc.