I will never live down getting sent home in Masterchef: Back to Win over dumplings. I literally teach dumpling classes, so it’s actually traumatic, even if the filling for my potstickers weren’t traditional(and before anyone asks, hell no would I ever go back to Masterchef to try to redeem myself on these, because honestly, they’d probably find a way to eliminate me for chocolate cake and I need to stop letting my favorite dishes, be it filet mignon, tarte tatin, or potstickers be triggers in my life) Needless to say, whenever I make dumplings or potstickers now, I do have to overcome that emotional hurdle of feeling completely humiliated. And usually I get over it the moment I eat my own dumplings, because I actually like them. I make a pretty juicy filling with ground pork belly, mirin, mushroom soy, sesame oil, and cabbage, which results in a pretty standard Chinese dumpling filling. With my cabbage, I salt it to release a lot of the excess liquid, since the additions of soy sauce, mirin, and sesame, while adding flavor already adds a lot of moisture, and too much moisture in your filling will result in exploding dumplings. Besides the fact that “Exploding Dumplings” should be the name of a mobile game app, it’s not so fun to clean up a kitchen after that happens. For the wrapper, these are the time-sucker. I make a pretty simple dough, but it’s the portioning, rolling, and crimping part that is bottleneck, and what makes makes these potstickers an absolute labor of love.

For the filling:
8oz napa cabbage
2 tbsp salt
8oz pork belly, skin removed and ground coarsely
2 tbsp mirin
1 tbsp mushroom soy
1 tsp sesame oil

Slice the cabbage thinly and toss with salt. Allow the cabbage to sit at room temperature for 10 minutes before wringing out as much liquid as possible. Then dice up the cabbage finely. Mix the cabbage with the other ingredients to form your filling. Keep the filling refrigerated until time to assemble.

For the wrappers:
3 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cups cold water
a pinch of salt
cornstarch

In a bowl, mix the flour, water, and salt together until a smooth dough forms. Divide up the dough into 20g balls. Roll each ball out as thinly as possible to form 4-inch disks. Dust each disk with a light layer of cornstarch.

For assembly:
Scoop 3oz of the filling onto each disk and crimp the edges to form your dumplings. Sear the dumplings in a nonstick pan on medium-high heat for 3 minutes. Then add to the pan 2/3 cups water, and cook, covered, for another 5 minutes on medium heat. Then remove the lid and allow any excess water to evaporate before transferring the dumplings to a plate to serve.