I saw a Youtube video about this Taiwanese company that does colorful dumplings (饺子) and thought it is great! We can increase the fibre and vegetable intake while eating dumplings. How cool is that!
So I went about doing an experiment with this… which, by the way, took way too long. I like to cook my meals in 30 minutes but this experiment took me hours! Edited in August 2020: The good news is, after the first trial and error, the second time I made them took far less time.
I couldn’t decide what shape to make them in, and I couldn’t decide how to cook them. In the end, I made them like gyoza or pot stickers.
I like that little bit of crunch, and the kids like the crunchy wings.
Having gone through this experiment, I think I will not make the skin this way again. Probably with the same juices, but I’d make wonton dough skin instead, since it is far faster (as I can use cold juice) and the skin is thinner. The ingredients are otherwise the same. It will be fun to see how it works when I make colorful wontons or noodles another time. Edited in August 2020, I did swap out the hot juices with cold juices and it worked perfect as gyozas as well!
I’d probably do this again, faster and better. But this experiment has been fruitful, as always!
Here’s the video that inspired me!
Colourful Pot Stickers (七彩锅贴）
Ingredients
Juice and colour
- 3 medium carrots or any root vegetables to get 0.25 cup of juice heat up to almost boiling extract the juice and add some pulp if you like
- 1 cup spinach or any leafy vegetables of any color add some or all of the pulp (to get 0.25 cup of juice) use a juice extractor, or boil the leaves for 0.5 minute then blend
- 1 tsp charcoal powder
Skin
- 2.5 cups plain flour
- 1 pinch salt
- 0.5 cup boiling water
Filing
- 500 g minced pork
- 2 tbsp cold water
- 0.5 cup prawn skin
- 1 tbsp soya sauce
- 0.5 tsp ground white pepper
- 1 tsp Chinese wine
- 1 tsp sesame oil
- 1 bunch garlic chives green onions finely chopped
Cooking
- 0.5 cup oil any vegetable
- 1 cup water boiling
- 1 handful plain flour
Equipment
- Rolling pin
- Pot
- Chopsticks
- Blender
Pot Sticker Wings
- 1 cup water
- 1/5 cup flour
Instructions
Dough Skin
- Add salt to the flour,, mix well and divide the mixture into 4 equal portions
- Add carrot juice to one portion, spinach juice to the second, water and charcoal powder to the third and only water to the fourth portion. All the liquid must be very hot but not boiling.
- Wrap the dough up separately to cool down while making the filings.
Filing
- Add all the ingredients in a big bowl. Using a pair of chopsticks, stir in one direction until the meat turns sticky, about 5 minutes. I call this meat gluten. Haha
Wrappers
- Cover the dough surface (do no knead into the dough) with corn flour.
- Roll the dough to very thin (2mm), and then cut with a 8cm round cookie cutter. You should be able to make 45 to 50 wrappers.
- Place the filings in each wrapper and fold up in whatever shape you like!. Watch a Youtube video, or the one below if you have never done dumplings before.
- Make the slurry for the pot stickers by mixing the water and flour, set aside.
Cooking
- Heat up half a bowl of oil in a flat pan until it is hot.
- Pour it out of the pan into a bowl.
- Turn the fire off, and then arrange the dumplings close together on the pan.
- Add the wings slurry enough to cover the dumplings to half its height.
- Cover the pan with a glass cover if you can find one. Otherwise, any cover will do.
- Once the water dries up and the wings are starting to turn light brown, remove the cover quickly.
- Add the reserved oil to the pan.
- Let it sizzle for about 2 minutes.
- Pour the oil out of the pan.
- Place a plate over the gyoza while the gyoza is still in the pan and flip the pan and plate over, placing the gyoza in the plate.
- I like to serve it with scallions, black and white sesame seeds sprinkled all over. Thinly sliced ginger in black vinegar
Notes
- These dumplings are just as good boiled in water or steamed or fried. They are flexible.
