A few years ago Alyssa and I went to a dumpling-making class in Athens—the two of us and about ten other people stood around a commercial kitchen table while a guy taught us how to mix the filling, roll out the wrappers, stuff, and seal. 12 people each making dumplings at once yielded far too many for anyone to eat, but they were just too delicious to quit.
I got home, bought a dumpling press, and then never used it. Yesterday, Ryan and I were working on another pasta post for Paste, and decided, “you know what? This is similar, let’s make dumplings too.”
Here’s the recipe for the dough we used (except halved), and the recipe for the filling (except instead of pork, we used veal). I cheated a little with the dough mixing process by using a hand mixer, which seemed to stress the mixture and dry it out a little. I ended up having to knead it with my palms anyway.
I love our funny little piggy cutting board so much. It was too small to mince all the cabbage I needed to, so I had to do that in batches.
I also mixed the filling in a tupperware, since I remember from the class that you’re supposed to let the filling marinate and mix in the fridge for awhile before you stuff. Figured that would save me a cleaning step.
Snuck these overhead pictures of Ryan while he was working—I rolled out the dough on my pasta maker, and he stuffed the dumplings.
At the end of it, we made about 55 dumplings (give or take the several that we ate)! At this point we have so much homemade food (pasta, sausages, dumplings, etc) sitting in the freezer, we may never need to buy groceries again.