Tonight I made homemade steamed pork dumplings and topped it off with a glass or two of white wine.
I’m a wee bit stuffed.
Not bad for a first try. Turns out my wife love these things and grew up eating the Tibetan version of them called momos.
Praise be to Alton Brown.
I am exceedingly jealous! I love those things!!
I never tasted one!
Were they steamed in a wok?
Did it take all day to make them?
Details!!!
M
I’m with Dix. You need to tell us a little more 
. Can you find a picture on the Internet so we can see what they look like? I have a couple of types of “dumplings” I’m imagining.
Uh oh! I bet I can tell what Cynth’s next cooking project will be . . . 
My culinary project for the day is inspired from a stew from the Tatar tradition. Azu, I think it’s called. It’s not particularly remarkable (aside from an exotic pepper relish and pickled or salted cucumbers - I’ll consider those optional) except that the cubed potatoes are fried first. The idea of crispy-surfaced potatoes in a stew sounds really tasty. I’ll be using peanut oil for that.
Intriguing! I wish I had a kitchen. 
Here are some online pictures of pork dumplings:
This page has a recipe
http://www.arthurhungry.com/archives/2004/10/che_family_cooking.html
So, potstickers. I love them dearly.
Did you make them , and watch the super bowl game?
Nah, I’m not a big football kinda guy. We usually get together with friends, but this turned out to be a bad weekend.
I bought a $12 bamboo steamer and put it over boiling water on the wok. I lined the bottom with parchment paper and punched holes for the steam. The recipe I used was real close to this one:
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/pork-dumplings/detail.aspx
I upped the garlic and used less cabbage. The most work was chopping the veggies. Assembling was quick and the cooking took about 20 minutes per batch of 14. I think I over cooked them a bit, but since it was pork I wanted to be sure they were done.
I haven’t cooked a thing since that last episode. I am still recovering. It may take a long time. But I love to hear about food and cooking and see pictures. I think I’m an armchair cook basically. I’m sort of an armchair everything when I think about it .
My husband makes pretty good pot-stickers. I think sometimes he has also just steamed them. He makes quite a few and freezes them. They seem to taste just fine after they’ve been frozen.
Congratulations, beowulf! You are very brave!
That recipe sounds good! It doesn’t sound too difficult, come on Cynth! Let’s make them this weekend!
My husband is a good veggy chopper… I bet your husband is, too!
And I just bought a new Joyce Chen chopping knife, too
I want to get some kind of sauce to dip those dumplings in, though…
I think that recipe site looks like a good one 
M
We just used soy sauce and added a few chopped up chili peppers for sauce.
NO NO NO!!! For dumplings you need Chinese chili sauce. Go to an Asian store where they speak Cantonese and ask for lat dju jun. The black coloured stuff will kill you, but the red stuff is relatively safe (though not harmless).
djm
Hey,Dix, I’m sure you would have a great success with that recipe. And they are definitely really good. The one thing to watch out for, just my experience from long ago, is that the wonton wrappers (before you have put the filling in) can dry out a bit, once you have opened the package up, and crack which can make things diffficult. To prevent that from happening, I think you can keep them in a plastic bag and just reach in to get the wrapper. Or put the little opened package under a damp towel or something. It isn’t hard, just keep them a bit humidified. Perhaps my experience was unusual, so I’m not saying this is what you ought to do, just something to keep in mind I guess. This weekend? Hmm. Err…I’ll get back to you 
.
I didn’t find a recipe on the URL that BillChin posted, but that website sure has some interesting photos and links to other interesting food websites.
I like a mixture of about half and half soy sauce and Chinese black vinegar, add some finely chopped Thai peppers or a bit of Chinese crushed pepper in oil.
Fresh hand made dumplings are great. Love em.
We made do with what was in the fridge, however next time I’ll run to the asian market to get some. There’s a huge one not too far from my office where you can get anything you want, or don’t want.
I keep my fridge constantly stocked with a bottle of Sriracha</a](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sriracha">Sriracha</a)>, which until I just now I always called Rooster sauce.
I did keep the won tons on a towel covered by a slightly moistened paper towel and take them one at a time. They were surprisingly easy to work with, I thought it would be more difficult.
Another option is Hoisin sauce.
Okay, the results: I’ll have to try the basic recipe again without frying the potatoes to be sure, but it seems to me that all the frying does is add a bit of smoky flavor to the stew and possibly contribute somewhat to the thickening in that the fried surfaces dissolved away (the stew’s main thickening agent was a can of tomato paste, by the way, which is both brilliant in that I didn’t have to screw around with flour, which I hate, and funny in that it doesn’t taste very tomato-y after it’s mixed in). Dunno if there would have been less wear-and-tear on the (red) potatoes without the frying, hence the need for another go at it to be sure, but that’s a lot of stew - epic, even - to wade through, and I don’t want to develop a dislike of the stuff if you know what I mean. I’m sure my memory will do me just fine. At this point I’m suspecting that I probably won’t do the frying thing again as it’s an extra time-consuming step whose inconvenience seems to outweigh any benefits. If you insist anyway on frying your potatoes, by the way, either have a really good overhead ventilator suction thingum above the stove, or, better yet, fry 'em up outdoors. Seriously. And at first when the potatoes were added into the stew, the aromas were such that I thought I’d ruined the batch. Everything mellowed out, though, and the stew smells and tastes great now. Yippee, I suppose: it’s still a buttload-o-stew however you serve it up.