Cookbook Club – Hey There, Dumpling!

For March’s Cookbook Club, we used Hey There, Dumpling! by Kenny Lao. I made the Kimchi Beef Dumplings. You can see the whole dumpling and dipping sauce mix and match extravaganza on my Cookbook Club site. For now – my dish!

The kimchi beef dumplings caught my eye because I love kimchi, so I was somewhat disappointed to discover upon further reading of the recipe that there is not in fact any kimchi in these dumplings. Instead, it’s a mixture of cabbage and gochujang that is supposed to approximate the flavor of kimchi. But I thought I’d give it a go.

I mixed cabbage and salt and let stand for 10 minutes, then squeezed out as much of the liquid as possible.

Then I combined the cabbage with ground beef, chopped onion, gochujang, garlic, sugar, soy sauce, and pepper in a large bowl. I worked the mixture with my hands until incorporated.

Brad had shared some homemade dough with me, so I hand-rolled individual dumpling wrappers. It was fun to say I did this once, but it took hours and I don’t think the result was noticeably better than store-bought, so in the future I’ll just be buying wrappers. I scooped a spoonful of filling onto each wrapper, folded them in half, and pinched them shut pleating the top half the way Jeff taught me.

Once I’d folded all the dumplings, I coated the bottom of a pan with oil, arranged a layer of dumplings, added 3 tablespoons of water, and cooked covered over medium heat for 7 minutes.

I had my reservations at the start about including a lot of cabbage, as I like my dumplings meaty rather than loaded with filler, but these turned out quite nice. They weren’t quite as full as I’d have preferred (my grandpa always said I was an overstuffer), but I think with practice I could get them there.