Pork and Cabbage Dumplings

Pork and Cabbage Dumplings

Ingredients

• 500g Pork (ground)
• 1/2 head Napa cabbage
• 2 tbsp Light soy sauce
• 1 tbsp Dark soy sauce
• 4 stalks Scallions
• to taste Salt
• 1 tbsp Oyster sauce
• 5 pcs Sichuan peppercorns
• 1 piece Ginger
• a pinch Thirteen-spice powder

Instructions

1. Finely chop the napa cabbage, sprinkle with salt, and let it sit for a while to draw out moisture.
2. To the ground pork, add minced ginger, chopped scallions (be generous with the scallions), thirteen-spice powder, salt, 1 tbsp dark soy sauce, 1 tbsp light soy sauce, and 1 tbsp oyster sauce. If you dislike bits of ginger, ginger powder works too — but don’t skip it, as ginger is key to fragrant meat filling.
3. Heat a little oil in a small pan and toast a few Sichuan peppercorns and a bay leaf in it.
4. Pour the fragrant hot oil (peppercorns and bay leaf removed) into the meat filling. Squeeze the excess water out of the salted cabbage and add it in. Mix everything thoroughly. For best results, refrigerate the filling for half a day — prep it at lunch and wrap in the evening.
5. Place a spoonful of filling onto a store-bought dumpling wrapper. Seal the edges, then use the web of your hand (thumb–index finger pinch) to pleat the border.
6. Repeat until all dumplings are wrapped.
7. Bring a pot of water to a boil, add a pinch of salt, and gently slide in the dumplings. Use a spatula to nudge them from the bottom so they don’t stick.
8. While the dumplings cook, make the garlic dip: crush garlic cloves with a rolling pin to make a coarse paste.
9. Mix the garlic paste with a splash of cool boiled water, light soy sauce, and a drizzle of hot oil.
10. Add chili oil and vinegar to the garlic sauce to taste. Serve alongside a bowl of dumpling broth — as the old saying goes, ‘original broth digests original food.’
11. Kids love these too!