Chicken Potstickers

Asian

Apr 14

Written By

Sorry, guys—I’ve been holding out on you. Life has just been too super busy to blog, but just un-busy enough to cook! The last thing I made, and to be honest this was quite a while ago, was chicken potstickers.

Oh my god.

These were AWESOME. Seriously. I cook a lot. And I feed people a lot. And this was one of the most satisfying recipes that I’ve ever made. Everyone loved it; they were delicious. And to give myself a bit of credit ;) they were cooked just perfectly.

And they’re a bit complex to make, but it’s more complicated on the number-of-steps side as opposed to the number-of-ingredients or time component.

But regardless, it’s you who’s gonna look at the recipe and decide whether or not you want to make it or not :) So, here you go!

Ingredients for the filling

1 lb ground chicken
3 chopped green onions/scallions
3 cloves garlic, finely minced
1/4” minced ginger
1 tbsp chili & garlic sauce (Sriracha will suffice)
1 tsp of crushed red pepper, if you want to make it spicy :D

For the outside part, you just need to go to the store and buy dumpling wrappers. I got these 4” dumpling wrappers from the Asian store near by. and in that little bowl on the side is corn starch and water, which is food glue for the dumplings!

Process

Mix together the ground chicken, chopped green onions, minced ginger and garlic, chili & garlic sauce, and crushed red pepper.
Then take about…a small spoonful of the chicken mixture and put it in the center of the dumpling wrapper.
Dip your finger in the Food Glue and smear it around half of the edge of the dumpling.
Then fold the dumpling over and seal the edge by just pushing down. (I usually push from one end to the other, and right before I completely seal it, I push out any air that might be in the dumpling.)
Once the dumplings are made, they should look like this:The rest of the process is a bit risky, but probably the most important.
Get a pot of water boiling. (If your pots of water are anything like mine and have performance anxiety and just can’t boil water when being watched, then this will probably take a solid 10-20 minutes.)
And then, get a pan of oil hot. The oil will get hot really quickly, so just do that once the water is already boiling.
Slip your dumplings into the boiling water and wait until they start floating. That’s how you’ll know they’re done…..also if you don’t notice them floating after a bit, make sure they aren’t stuck to the bottom. That happens sometimes.
After they start floating, you need to “drain” them (I use a “spider strainer”….or at least that’s what amazon told me it was called when I googled it). And then shake off the excess water a bit.
THIS IS THE DANGEROUS PART. WARNING. THE OIL SPLATTERS. WEAR AN APRON OR SOME PROTECTION: you need to put the dumpling into the hot oil to get a nice crispy outside part. (If you like steamed dumplings, then just keep it in the boiling water for another couple minutes and eat them, as is.) If you like them fried, let them crisp up in the pan. Flip them over after maybe 4 minutes, as you see them getting dark golden.