Mandu – Korean Dumplings – EAT it NOW or EAT it LATER

Cooking and baking can be tedious tasks. Especially when you do them alone. Spice them up and have cooking parties!! Friends make all the difference in the world.

This time we decided to make mandu or Korean dumplings. They can be fried or broiled and contain meat, tofu, green onions, garlic and ginger. Mandu are similar to perogies or gyozas and surprisingly simple to make.

Begin by prepping the filling. Chop the onions and put them in a large mixing bowl. We decided to double the recipe so we needed 2 cups of onions.

Peel and mince two teaspoons of ginger. Place this in the mixing bowl.

Mince 6 cloves of garlic and set aside.

In a frying pan, sauté the onions until they are slightly tender. Add the garlic and simmer on low. Turn it off after a couple of minutes and set aside.

In the meantime, wash and chop the buchu. If you can’t find it, use green onions. You will need about 3 cups of chopped buchu.

In another bowl, take the 2/3 cups of tofu and crumble it. This will give the mandu filling a nice texture.

We have a lot of vegetarian friends and to make the mandu meat-less, we used mushrooms as a substitute. Choose mushrooms such as shitake and portabello. This will give you a nice meaty substitute. We decided to use King oyster and enoki mushrooms.

Cook and chop some dangmyeon (sweet potato noodles). You want about a cup of noodle.

In a bowl, mix the tofu, onions, buchu and noodles. Mix well.

Chop 2 cups of kimchi and mix in with rest of the filling. Season it with a bit of sugar, salt and pepper.

While the filling is being made, have someone else make the dough. (This works wonders when there are a lot of friends willing to try out new recipes!!). The dough is easy and simple.

In a bowl, add 2 cups of flour, 1/2 teaspoon of salt and 2/3 cups water. Start with less flour and add more. Moisture in the air can affect how dry the flour is. The dryer the air, the more water (or less flour) you have to use. Mix everything together until you get a nice soft dough. You may need to add more water to get a good consistency.

Once you have created a ball of dough, knead for a couple of minutes and place it in a bowl covered with a damp tea towel. Alternatively, you can wrap it with some plastic. Let the dough rest for 10-3o minutes.

When the dough has rested, cut the dough in small 1 inch balls.

On a floured surface, roll the balls of dough out to make the wrappers. Make sure to not over roll them and make them too thin. It will be a lot harder to wrap the filling later.

While rolling out the dough make sure to keep the other balls wrapped.

Keep the rolled wrappers covered with plastic wrap to prevent them from drying out before you are ready to use them.

When filling the dumplings, take a small amount of filling and place it in the middle. You want to make sure you have enough dough to seal the dumpling.

There are different ways to seal the dumpling. You can create a pinch pattern by pinching from one end all the way to the other end. This creates a nice pattern along the centre of the dumpling. Any way you seal the dumpling, make sure it is sealed correctly. If you don’t seal it properly, the filling will come out when you cook it.

To cook these dumplings, you can either steam them, boil them or fry them. We decided to fry them because who doesn’t like fried food! Serve with some dipping sauce!!