Naughty or Nice: "Homemade" Gyoza - I Can Has Cook?

Isn’t it brilliant when you find out that something that looks impossible to make is actually incredibly simple? My most recent nomrevelation has been gyoza.

With the help of some handy ready-to-roll gyoza pasty discs that I found in Asia Market on Drury Street – amazingly named Happy Belly Gyoza Skins – it turns out making your own dumplings is a piece of cake.

I shared a recipe in Weekend’s Naughty or Nice column over the weekend, to correspond with Aoife B’s much less naughty Udon Noodles with Purple Sprouting Broccoli. The recipe, which you’ll find after the jump, uses pork meat to flavour the dumpings. I’ve since made them with leftover roast chicken meat and got my Roller Derby buddies Claire and Sara over after practice to help me roll them.

There’s a slight knack to rolling them but basically if you get the pastry to stick together, you don’t really have to worry about making them amazing. However, I have included the most incredimaze instructional video of all time at the bottom of the post. It’s from a Japanese TV programme called Cooking With Dog and it’s not what you think. I promise.

Homemade Gyoza (from Naughty or Nice April 14th)

As I said, I’ve made this a few times and have replaced the pork meat with shredded pieces of leftover roast chicken. I have also added a dash of fish sauce and a dash of brown rice vinegar to the filling and it totally rocked it.

2 tablespoons of toasted sesame oil (or regular olive oil)

A large handful, or about a third of a head, of finely shredded cabbage (use a grater to do this as you want the cabbage to be really thin)

1 carrot, peeled and finely sliced into small strips about 2cm long

One small onion, finely diced

One clove of garlic, finely diced

One tablespoon of chilli flakes

Six good quality pork sausages

One defrosted packet of gyoza skins (available in specialist Asian food stores)

One free-range eggs

Olive Oil

Start by frying a large handful of finely shredded cabbage, one chopped onion and one finely chopped clove of garlic in one tablespoon of toasted sesame oil over a medium to high heat. Add one teaspoon of chilli flakes and cook for five minutes, stirring so the vegetables cook evenly.

Meanwhile, remove the meat from six good quality pork sausages. Use your hands or a potato masher to bring together the sausage meat.

Add it to the frying pan and use a wooden spoon to separate the meat as it cooks with the vegetables. Cook for 15 minutes, or until the meat is browned and cooked through.

Get a 300g packet of defrosted gyoza skins and beat one free-range egg. Start assembling your gyoza by taking one gyoza skin and brushing the edges of it with beaten egg. Add one teaspoon of the sausage mix into the middle of the gyoza and then seal the edges, using your fingers to create a crimped edge. This will take a little bit of practice but it’s much easier than you might think. The main aim is that the gyoza are sealed.

Repeat until you have finished your sausage mixture. You should have between 20 and 24 gyoza.

To cook, heat 4 tablespoons of olive oil in a large frying pan over a medium heat and fry the gyoza until lightly browned on all sides. Then transfer them to a saucepan with a small amount of water and steam the gyoza for a further 3 to 5 minutes, until the pastry is silky.

*Update* Conor Bofin pointed out that you can also steam the gyoza by adding a few tablespoons of water to the frying pan and covering with a lid. I followed this method the second time I made the gyoza and it’s much more straight forward to do this rather than messing with other saucepans.

Serve with soy sauce and a crisp green salad on the side.

And, as promised, here is that amazing instructional video, which will take the place of my usual Kitchen Tune.