Citizens – gung hei fat choy, Happy Chinese New Year of the Dog to you all!
In celebration of this mightiest of holidays, allow me – the festive and thrice-blessed TFD! – to teach you a classic, must-have dish to help you ring in the New Year with proper good fortune!
Jiaozi are a kind of Chinese dumpling, commonly eaten in China and other parts of East Asia. They are one of the major foods eaten during the Chinese New Year and year-round in the northern provinces.
Jiaozi typically consist of a ground meat and/or vegetable filling wrapped into a thinly rolled piece of dough, which is then sealed by pressing the edges together. Finished jiaozi can be boiled (shuǐ jiǎo), steamed (zhēng jiǎo) or pan-fried (jiān jiǎo). Today’s recipe is for shuǐ jiǎo.
In China, there are several different folk stories explaining the origin of jiaozi and its name.
Traditionally, jiaozi were thought to be invented during the era of the Eastern Han (AD 25 – 220)by Zhang Zhongjing, who was a great practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine.
Jiaozi were originally referred to as “tender ears” (Chinese: 嬌耳; pinyin: jiao’er) because they were used to treat frostbitten ears. Zhang Zhongjing was on his way home during wintertime, when he found many common people had frostbitten ears, because they did not have warm clothes and sufficient food.
He treated these poor people by stewing lamb, black pepper, and some warming medicines in a pot, chopped them, and used them to fill small dough wrappers. He boiled these dumplings and gave them with the broth to his patients, until the coming of the Chinese New Year.
In order to celebrate the New Year as well as recovering from frostbitten ears, people imitated Zhang’s recipe to make Jiao’er.
Other theories suggest that jiaozi may have derived from dumplings in Western Asia. In the Western Han dynasty (206 BC – AD 9) jiaozi (餃子) were called Jiaozi (角子). During the Three Kingdoms period (AD 220 – 280), the book Guang Ya (廣雅) written by Zhang Yi (張揖) mentions jiaozi. Yan Zitui (顏子推) during the Northern Qi dynasty (AD 550 – 577) wrote:
“Today the jiaozi, shaped like a crescent moon, is a common food in the world.” Six Dynasties Turfan tombs contained dumplings. Later in the Tang Dynasty (AD 618 – 907), jiaozi become more popular, called Bian Shi (扁食). Chinese archaeologists have found a bowl of jiaozi in the Tang Dynasty tombs in Turpan. 7th or 8th Century dumplings and wontons were found in Turfan.
Jiaozi may also be named because they are horn-shaped. The Chinese word for “horn” is jiao (Chinese: 角; pinyin: jiǎo), and jiaozi was originally written with the Chinese character for “horn”, but later it was replaced by the specific character 餃, which has the food radical on the left and the phonetic component jiāo (交) on the right.
At the same time, jiaozi look like yuan bao silver or gold ingots used as currency during the Ming Dynasty, and as the name sounds like the word for the earliest paper money, serving them is believed to bring prosperity. Many families eat these at midnight on Chinese New Year’s Eve. Some cooks will even hide a clean coin inside a jiaozi for the lucky to find.
Citizens, my recipe for jiaozi are more complexly flavored than most and incorporates several different ingredients from across China, but they are not difficult to make. The hardest part is closing / pleating them and this video makes it easy:
I wish you all a happy and prosperous Year of the Dog!
Battle on – The Generalissimo
PrintThe Hirshon Chinese Jiaozi Dumplings – 白菜豬肉餃子
- Total Time: 0 hours
Ingredients
- 40–50 round dumpling wrappers
- 1/2 lb ground pork, half fat – add additional chopped cold Lard to pork if needed to bring to 50/50 meat/fat ratio
- 1 3/4 cups Napa cabbage, finely chopped
- 1/4 cup finely minced Sichuan preserved vegetable – if unavailable, use plain old Napa cabbage
- 1 1/2 tsp salt
- 2 1/2 tbsp light soy sauce
- 1 tsp sesame oil (Kadoya brand preferred)
- 3 tsp Shaoxing rice wine
- 1 tbsp sugar
- 2 tsp white pepper
- 1/2 tbsp. oyster sauce
- 1/2 tbsp. minced ginger
- 1 large egg (duck egg preferred)
- 1/4 cup chopped scallion
- 1/4 cup chopped garlic chives, including flowering heads
- 1 tbsp. hot chili oil (Kadoya brand preferred)
- 1 tbsp. Sichuan peppercorn oil (if unavailable, use chili oil)
- 1/2 tbsp. water
- 1 tbsp. flour
- ***
- For the dipping sauce:
- 1/4 cup soy sauce
- 1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
- 2 1/2 teaspoons sugar
- 1/2 medium scallion, minced
- 2 teaspoons minced fresh gingerroot
- 1/2 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
- 1/2 teaspoon hot red pepper flakes
Instructions
- Combine pork, salt, soy sauce, sesame oil, rice wine, sugar, white pepper, oyster sauce and water in large mixing bowl.
- Stir in one direction for a couple of minutes until the pork mixture stops looking like separated pork pieces and more like a paste.
- Add flour and egg and mix in. Add the cabbage and Tianjin preserved vegetable and stir in one direction until thoroughly mixed, fluffy and smooth.
- Let rest in fridge 1 hour to combine flavors.
- Heat the chili and peppercorn oils until smoking. Put scallions and chives on top of meat mixture, pour smoking oil over the greens to maximize their aroma. Stir, again in the same direction, until incorporated.
- Prepare working area with dumpling wrappers (keep covered until use), a small bowl of water, pork mixture, and a clean plate for placing of wrapped dumplings.
- For each jiaozi, take one dumpling skin and place one scant tablespoon in middle. Keeping your fingers as dry as possible, wrap and pleat the jiaozi according to the video. Once wrapped you can eat right away by cooking in lightly boiling water for 9 minutes.
- For the dipping sauce:
- Bring soy sauce, vinegar, sugar and ¼ cup water to boil in small saucepan over medium heat, stirring until sugar dissolves.
- Pour mixture into bowl and stir in scallion, ginger, oil, and hot red pepper flakes (Sauce can be refrigerated in air-tight container for several days).
- Any jiaozi you don’t eat right away should be immediately frozen. Line a shelf in the freezer with saran wrap and then place the jiaozi on top.
- Once completely frozen, place into zip lock bags. These should keep about a month in the freezer, if they last that long. To cook frozen jiaozi, boil for 10 minutes, stirring in the beginning to prevent sticking to the bottom of the pot.
- Either cooked from frozen or fresh, scoop out with strainer and serve hot with dipping sauce.
- Prep Time: 0 hours
- Cook Time: 0 hours
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