Chinese Chive Pork Dumplings 韭菜餃子
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With the Super Bowl behind us it’s time to start thinking about the next game plan. As some of you might already know, February 10th 2013 is the first day of Chinese New Year. This year is the Year of Snake!
According to this site, if your lucky element is fire, your fortune will begin to take off. Don’t know what your lucky element is? Find out from simple system. All you need is your birthday. If you are that lucky person with the fire element, you should also consider participating this giveaway I am hosting. The winner will take home a 10-piece wok set I am giving away and that winner could be you. You’ll have until Feb 17 2013 to enter to win.
Since food is a huge part of the celebration, I have included Chinese New Year dinner ideas from my past posts. Hope you’ll find something you like for this year’s celebration.
Clockwise from top left
Lu Wei (滷味) – Braised aromatic goodness
Turnip Cake (蘿蔔糕) – Classic Dim Sum Dish
White Boiled Shrimp (白灼蝦) – Simple and delicious
Black Sesame Tang Yuan (黑芝麻湯圓) – Chinese Glutinous Rice Ball
Eight-Treasure Rice (八寶飯)
Steamed Fish (清蒸魚) – Holiday family dinner essential
Now, let’s talk about this year’s dish. Dumplings or Jiaozi 餃子 in Chinese, are widely considered an essential part of Chinese New Year meals by many. Not only these dough-wrapped pockets are delicious to eat, the shape of dumplings also resembles the gold ingot (元寶) which means wealth and prosperity.
In many parts of China, making dumplings from scratch is truly a team work. The whole family would sit around the dinner table with divided task. Each member, in synchronization, would carry out one of the steps ranging from making the dough, to rolling the skins, to folding the dumplings, while chatting and watching the CCTV’s Spring Festival Gala.
If you don’t have a whole family to work on the dumplings, you can still make them albeit with store-bought dumpling wrappers. I’ll show you how easy this is in a few more sentences. Chinese chive dumplings are my favorite but if you are not used to the taste of chive you can also use other types of veggies. Later on I’ll post a dumpling recipe with cabbage stuffing.
There are many ways to make dumplings and today Alice and I will show you one of the easiest ways to make some delicious dumplings, with step by step instructions!
step-by-step recipe
Ingredients:
Chinese Chive Pork Stuffing
- 1 lb ground pork
- 2 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 tsp Sugar
- Salt
- 1 package round dumpling wrapper
- 1tsp white pepper powder
- 1 tsp sesame oil
- 2 stalk scallion
- 2 slice fresh ginger
- 2 tsp cornstarch
- 1 tbs vegetable cooking oil
Directions:
In a large bowl, combine the chopped chives with 1tsp of salt. Mix well and set aside for 20 minutes. This process will leave the chive to wilt, making it easier to mix later on. 
In the meantime, chop the ginger and scallion then mix them with I cup of water. The ginger scallion water will be used in flavoring the meat filling. 
Combine the wilted chive with pork, white pepper powder, soy sauce, sugar, cornstarch, and 1 tbsp of salt. Mix well using a soup spoon. 
Slowly add ginger-scallion-water to the filling while swirling the spoon in one direction until you have a paste consistency. Add the sesame oil and vegetable oil and mix for one more minute. All this stirring and mixing will make the meat absorb the liquid you add to it, resulting a juicy stuffing. Set the filling aside. 
To fold the dumplings, fist lay a dumpling wrapper flat on your palm. Then spoon about 1 tbsp of dumpling filling and place in the middle of the wrapper. Dip your fingertip in water and wet the entire edge of the wrapper. Make 3 pleats (or more if you want to go fancy) on one side of the wrapper then fold dumpling in half to enclose filling, and pinch the two edges together tightly. 
Place the dumplings on flour-dusted workstation. Repeat this process for the rest of the filling.
There are many ways of cooking dumplings. The easiest is to boil them in water and serve with a dipping sauce. Steamed dumplings are also very popular in China. Of course you can also fry the dumplings to make potstickers.
Lastly, wish everyone a Happy Chinese New Year / Gong Hey Fat Choy / 恭喜發財 / Xin Nian Kuai Le / 新年快樂!
In tomorrow’s post, I will show you how to make the potstickers aka fried dumplings (and they are easy to cook I promise). So please don’t wander too far 🙂
P.S. if you make extra dumplings like I also we, you can place them in a Ziploc and freeze them in the freezer. Just make sure you sprinkle enough flour so they don’t stick.
P.S.S. I will also post a Youtube video on how to fold dumplings. Please check back soon!
P.S.S.S. If you absolutely are not into folding your dumplings, you can considering getting a dumpling makers such as the ones shown below. These tools will make your life even easier!
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My dumplings turned out way too salty. The 1/2 tsp of salt with the chives plus the 1tbsp salt and 2tbsp soy sauce added to the meat mixture was a bit much I think. I’ll probably cut down on the soy sauce and salt next time I try it.
hi Bart, i am sorry the filling was too salty. Please reduce the amount of the salt to your liking next time you try making this recipe. On potential factor causing this difference the type of soy sauce. I use a Japaneses brand soy sauce which is generally less salty. Hope this helps.
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If I double the recipe, do I use 2 cups of water? Seems a bit much. Also, I made these tonight a thought the white pepper was a bit much and made it a bit spicy, was this the case?
Hi Elle, thanks for checking out the recipe. If you wanted to double up the recipe, I’d start with 1.5cups of water for the scallion/ginger. Hope this helps.
Hi Yi!
Thank you for this recipe. I have started making dumplings with my kids and they love it. Your recipe is the best I’ve found so far. One tip I got from a friend’s dad- he dips the dumpling in vinegar before frying so they don’t stick to the pan. It really works. Thanks again and keep sharing your great recipes!
Hi Phyllis, thanks for the feedback and glad to hear that you and your family liked the recipe. The vinegar tip sounds good. I’ll have to try it out next time I am making pot-stickers. Thanks for sharing that!
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Hi Yi,
How many dumplings does this recipe make if one is using the prepackaged round dumpling stickers? if you are going to freeze these – are they frozen right after making them but before steaming/cooking them? Thanks.
Your recipe really looks delicious. I grew some garlic chives this summer and have been wanting to try these dumplings.
HI Robin, this recipe yields between 25 – 30 dumplings using the pre-made wrappers. I normally freeze them raw and as soon as you finish wrapping them. Hope you get to use your home grown chives in this recipe 🙂
Hi Yi, Just made these potstickers tonight and we thought they were a little salty.
Did anybody else think so. One tablespoon in step 4 seems like a lot. I also used
sea salt so if you used regular salt it would really be salty. Otherwise they really good. Thanks
Planning to make your red braised pork belly
Hi there, thanks for brining this to my attention. I’ll definitely look into the salt amount ad I personally hat salty food too. Hope you enjoy the red braised pork dish too!
Sea Salt is “saltier” tasting than regular, you got it backwards. Use regular table salt, it works best in this recipe.
Yi, do you have the recipe for the dumpling wrapper?
Hi There, yes i’ll post a dumpling wrapper recipe sometime. Please stay tuned.
Hi, do I need to rinse out the chive with the salt in it before adding to the meat mixture? Thank you in advance
Hi Marie, you don’t have to rinse the chive with the salt. Please let me know if you have any other questions. Thanks for visiting.
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I tried it and they are prefect. But I did not add more salt in the step 4 and make half of recipe. I like yours is so clear and steps by steps. I will try the turnip cake next time.
Thanks!
Hello,
I’m not sure if I’ve just missed something, but I saw that there is cornstarch in the ingredients list, but I don’t see where it’s used in the instructions. Can you let me know?
Thanks! I hope to make these tomorrow, I’m so excited!
Estelle
Hello Estelle, I am ssorry for the very late reply. Thank you for spotting the error I have added the use of cornsarch in the procedure. It’s added to the mixture in step 4. I apologize again for the late reply and I hope you were able to make these dumplings.
Hello! I would love it if you could help me find a recipe for Steamed Mini-Buns from the Seven Turns Bridge in Shanghai China and a soup that was called Satay Beef and Noodles from the Jin Jang Towers in Shanghai as well. In the 90’s I worked in China and started all my trips at the Jin Jang Towers and would order this EVERY time I hit the ground! I loved it! But for two years I have been unable to find a recipe to make this at home. I am very good at making noodles and would love to see if you could try this as well. I even tried to contact the Towers but could never get a live person on the phone to help me.
hi Lori, first of all, thank you for stopping by my blog. I have never stayed at Jin Jang Tower but I am really curious about the satay beef noodle. I am going to do some digging and will let you know about my finding. Thanks.
Beautiful photos and what beautifully wrapped dumplings! I also made dumplings for Chinese New Year this year. This time, I followed a recipe my coworker gave me for making fresh flour dumpling wraps. I don’t know what possessed me to give me the courage to make my own wraps, especially since I’m not much of a baker/cook working with flour. But things did turn out well and I had fun making those dumpling wraps! Next time, I will try making them with your recipe for the filling! =)
Hello Sharon, thank you for your visit. Yeah those homemade wrappers are definitely better than the store bought ones but as you mentioned it takes a lot of courage and skill to make the wrappers nicely.
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Thanks for posting this recipe with such clear instructions – would never have guessed they could be that easy to make!
Are there any other common traditional fillings? And (as the batch was rather large for the two of us) in general how long can they live in the fridge before cooking, or can they be frozen at this point?
Just off to have a traditional Chinese breakfast then 🙂
Hello Juliet, thank for checking out this recipe. Yes there are many other variations to the filing. I will continue this dumpling series with different types of fillings shortly. I’d suggest leaving the dumplings in the fridge for as many days as you would for meat so maybe 2 days the top. Yes you can freeze them in the freezer and keep them tightly seal for up to a month. Please let me know if you have any other questions!
These look amazing Yi, I’m so excited to try them.
I spent two weeks in China during year 12 (Senior year I guess) at high school (12 years ago now) as part of my Manderin studies. We spent 8 days in Shang Hai, on our first morning there, 3 friends and I went out exploring early in the morning, and just around the corner from our hotel we discovered a little old man selling steamed pork buns and fried jiaozi. The jiaozi were one of the most delicious things I have ever tasted. We were there promptly at 7am every morning for the rest of our stay there, and I have been searching for a recipie ever since! This is the closest I’ve found.
We went looking for him at lunchtime once or twice, but he was always gone by midday. So I guess they were more of a breakfast food. I know those particular jiaozi had chives in them, but I’m not sure they had meat in them… at the time I thought it might be egg, but I’m not sure how an egg mixture would work in a dumpling like this.
Are these commonly eaten for breakfast? Is there a similar breakfast recipie that you know of? Any Idea what I’m talking about at all?
Hello Sarah, thanks for stopping by! To answer your question, fried dumplings or potstickers are very popular breakfast in China. When I grew up in China I had steamed buns and potstickers every other morning for breakfast. The breakfast potstickers are sometimes slightly skinnier with thinner wrappers than the regular dumplings.
As for the stuffing, the egg + chive stuffing is also common in China. My cousin who was vegetarian when she was little so every time we made dumplings for family reunion dinner we had to specially prepared the egg + chive filling for her.
If you would like to make the egg + chive stuffing, just simply replace the meat with scrambled eggs. You might have to make some adjustments with other ingredients to get the right flavor. Check out my potsticker post for the instructions on how to fry dumplings.
Please feel free to let me know if you have any other questions.
Thanks
Yi
Cook the eggs first! of course! Thanks Yi, I’m so excited, I’m going to make them this weekend and eat them for breakfast all week next week 😀
yup you got it. Please let me know how they came out. Thanks.
Look at the pleats on those dumplings, perfectly done
Thanks a lot Raymund
Glad I found your site! Can’t wait to try this out.
Thanks for checking out my site Maggie
Glad I found your site!
they look so perfect… I wish I can do this 🙂 I’ll try
Happy Chinese New Year
Cath
Hey Cath, yes you can do it of course. Give it a try and you’ll find folding dumplings isn’t that hard and fun to do!
Mmmmm, yummy to my tummy.
thanks for checking out the recipe DarkAgent!
They look just like those from star hotel restaurants!
Happy Chinese New Year, Yi.
Thanks Angie I am so flattered. Happy New Year!
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Beautiful dumplings! I love chives and we always order chives dumplings at dim sum. My mom always used chives in dumplings but I haven’t added since my kids may notice the strong flavor…but they are old enough and I should experiment…hopefully they will find it tasty! Hope you have a great holiday! Happy New Year!! (I was going to use my horrible Chinese skill but then I realized I never typed it so I don’t know how to write it… haha).
Hi Nami thank for dropping by. I hope your kids will take the chive dumplings one day. Happy Chinese New Year to you as well!
Wow, your dumplings look perfect Yi…and they are sure perfect for the Chinese New Year…thanks for the recipes…
Hope you are enjoying your week.
Thanks Juliana for your kind words. You have a Happy New Year as well!
Yi, those dumplings are gorgeous! Thank you for the Chinese New Year recipes, I am gathering up ideas and those are super helpful!
I love dumplings! These look terrific. I’ve been playing around with them off and on for the last couple of months, and will definitely try your recipe. Looking forward to the pot stickers – one of my faves! Good stuff – thanks.
These are beautiful! I have fond memories of making dumplings from scratch as a family. My dad rolled out the dough for the wrappers, my mom and I folded the dumplings, and my brother tried to help (albeit not very successfully!). The pork-chive combo is definitely one of our favorites.
Thanks Eva for dropping by. Yup, when I lived with my parents, we used to make dumplings like what you just described. Fun times!