Chef John’s Best Dumpling Recipes

[Music] pot stickers that's right i love all sorts of dumplings but these are probably my favorite and perfect for people that can't decide whether they want fried dumplings or steamed dumplings since these are fried and steamed and then actually fried again and don't even get me started on the amazingly flavorful easy to make pork filling which is exactly what we're gonna get started with and we'll begin with one pound of freshly ground pork to each we'll add some finely minced garlic as well as some sliced green onions and this time we can use the light and the green parts and then we're also going to want lots of very finely chopped ginger and i know we usually grate that on the microplane but this time i want you to take a knife and chop it up until it's nice and fine like you see here but anyway we'll continue on by adding some soy sauce as well as a little touch of sesame oil which we always want to be careful of since that really can overpower things and then of course it never hurts to put it in a nice shake of cayenne and then last but not least we're gonna add a whole bunch of finely chopped up green cabbage or at least that's what i used you could probably use any kind you want savoy napa even the red cabbage which is really purple so that's up to you you are after all the binging wood babish of your cabbage and then once all that's in there we'll take a fork and mix this until combined and yes we could use our hands but whenever we're mixing meat we want to be careful not to overwork it okay i want a nice tender filling in these pot stickers and not a tough rubbery meatball so i find with this method there's a little less mashing of the meat and also we don't have the heat from our hands warming the fat so we'll go ahead and fork this mixture and fork it good until we're sure everything's thoroughly combined at which point we'll clean up the sides and sort of pat it down and then what we'll do is wrap this in plastic and transfer it into the fridge while we make our dough and not only is this stuff easier to work with cold it will also give it time for all those flavors to sort of mingle together you know just like a party's not that great when everyone first gets there same idea so we'll pop that in the fridge and start our very very simple dough and all we're going to need for that is a couple cups of all-purpose flour to which we'll add a little bit of salt and then last but not least some hot water okay it doesn't have to be boiling you can just use hot tap water or just microwave some until it's hot and we'll go ahead and pour that in and give it a stir with a wooden spoon and we'll keep stirring until it forms what we call in the business a shaggy dough which i don't know why but is really fun to say shaggy so we'll go ahead and mix that until it looks like this at which point we'll flour our hand and transfer that onto a work surface and then all we have to do is knead this until it comes together into a smooth elastic ball of dough and when we do things like this once out of every like a thousand times we'll have the perfect amount of flour and water but almost always we have to adjust usually with more flour so if we feel it's a little sticky we'll stop and sprinkle a little more on and we'll continue kneading adding more if necessary until we have as i said earlier a fairly smooth fairly elastic dough which is going to take i don't know three four five minutes i guess it depends on how furious you need but when you're done it'll look something like this and sort of spring back to the touch and then what we'll do once we've reached that point or you just got tired of kneading and decided to stop is we will wrap that in plastic and let it sit out just like that for 30 minutes and you'll see when you come back to unwrap it it's going to be even smoother and more silky and just an absolute pleasure to work with so 30 minutes later we'll unwrap and proceed to divide it into four sections which i'm just going to do by eye because that's close enough as i think i mentioned you're going to be amazed at how silky smooth this gets with that 30 minute rest i mean it really does feel amazingly good and it's in moments like this i get sad for people that don't cook because they will never feel this but anyway we'll divide that up and then once that's set what we'll do is take each of these pieces and roll them out until they're about the thickness of your thumb unless you have like super small thumbs which in that case simply roll it out to whatever you think a normal thumb thickness is and then each of these will divide into six just get them close that's all we ask at which point we can finally start forming our pot stickers so what we'll do first is take one of these pieces and roll it into a ball and then sort of flatten it out into a disk and then i'm going to roll that out to about three and a half inches wide using the totally wrong rolling pin okay this is much harder with a big rolling pin like this what they really use is more like a thick wooden dowel okay about the thickness of a broomstick in fact that's how you can make one by just simply cutting the handle off a broom if you're not married but the good news is it will still work as long as you can still roll it out nice and thin to like i said approximately three and a half inches wide and by the way it does not have to be perfectly round it just has to be round-ish and then once that's set we'll take our finger and dip it in a little bit of water and go around and moisten about the outside half inch but not too much we don't want to wet we just want it sticky and then once that's done we can place down in the center a perfect portion of our meat and i like a scoop because it's so much easier and then what follows is my very unprofessional yet highly effective way to seal these what i like to do is press it together in the center and then pick it up like this and then with my right hand i'm simultaneously pinching and pressing into the other side and don't worry i'm going to show you this a few times plus you can actually rewind on youtube now but basically we're just pinching a little bit of dough together and then pressing it into the other side to seal it and what that'll create is a set of pleats on one side without any pleats or folds on the other once we get that sealed we can always go back and do some fine tuning keeping in mind that no matter how bad you think these look they always look amazing once they're cooked so try to relax and then once i've done that along the length i'll make sure the bottom is nice and flat and then with the pleated side away from me we'll sort of bend each end back towards us to make a little bit of a curve which not only looks cool but it'll help them keep upright in the pan and that's it let's try it again so once we moisten and meet we'll pick it up and press the center together and then proceed with the old pinch press and pleat and i fully admit i'm pretty terrible at doing this but i really don't care because like i said they always still come out looking really nice having said that i do encourage you to check out some videos and watch some pros doing this because it's pretty impressive but if you only do these once or twice a year like me this may be about as good as it gets which is absolutely fine and by the way if you're just not into any kind of special shaping or pleating just simply press them together like a turnover with no pleating and the rest of the procedure will still work and what we'll want to do is we're making these is transfer them onto a well-floured plate and i'm going to go ahead and stop at 7 because i want to show you the rest of this technique and i'm starving and yes of course you can do these ahead but anyway that's the shaping phase and we're now ready to proceed to the cooking and eating and very ironically i'll be cooking my pot stickers in a non-stick pan into which we're going to drizzle a couple tablespoons of oil and place that over medium-high heat and by the way make sure you have a lid to cover these very close and then what we'll do once our oil is hot is place these in flat side down fancy side up and we'll cook them for approximately two minutes or until the bottoms are golden brown and we'll test by taking a look at them which is one of the advantages of the non-stick pan in the traditional method these are literally stuck to the bottom until we add the liquid so like i said we'll let these go for a couple minutes until the bottoms are golden brown which mine were right here and then what we're going to do is drizzle in a couple tablespoons of water and quickly cover these and we will let them steam for about three minutes and i said steam not boil which is why we only want a little bit of water and then what we'll do after three minutes is uncover them turn our heat down to medium and continue cooking for another couple minutes until all the water's gone and the bottoms are absolutely gorgeously golden brown and crispy and crunchy and looking amazing which i think these do and that's it once we've completed the fry steam fry method we'll go ahead and transfer those two plates of course with that gorgeous fried surface showing i mean what kind of crazy person would plate this that side down and then once arranged we need to add a little ramekin for our sauce as well as maybe a few green onions for a little bit of color oh by the way the recipe for the dipping sauce i'll give you on the blog but it's simply equal parts rice vinegar and soy sauce and that's it we just made homemade pot stickers and not only did these look great they sounded great too oh yeah that's the stuff so let me go ahead and dip one in and go in for a taste and man were these good that combination of textures between the crispy crunchy side and those softer tender sides is so interesting and so addictive and so amazing and while very simple that pork and cabbage filling is so flavorful and juicy so even though i'm not that proficient in making these i'm always absolutely thrilled with how they come out and if you're thinking that's too much work isn't it easier just to get these from the takeout place no it's not i ran the numbers this is easier if you factor in pleasure and satisfaction which i did and by the way you can use this exact same technique for any kind of filling okay imagine a cheeseburger pot sticker or a philly cheesesteak pot sticker or five alarm chili pot sticker or well you get the idea but regardless whether you use the traditional filling or not i really do hope you give these a try soon so head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] hello this is chef john from food wishes.com with lazy pork dumplings that's right making the dough and filling for a dumpling is pretty fast and easy but the thing that takes a little bit of time and effort is all the shaping and folding and crimping and pleating that goes into making a nice looking dumpling which is why i'm very excited to show you a method for making dumplings much faster and easier and while these might not be as pretty thanks to the amazing taste and texture the last thing you're going to be thinking about while you're eating these is what they look like so with that let's go ahead and get started with our lazy dough which is going to be made with nothing more than all-purpose flour a big pinch of salt and some warm water and what i like to do first is give this a mix with a normally sized wooden spoon until it all comes together into a very very sticky dough ball all right very sticky as in too sticky to knead but that is intentional because what we'll do when it looks like this is get rid of the spoon and we'll go ahead and transfer in some more flour at which point we'll switch to our hand and start kneading this and we will keep kneading adding more flour if necessary until we have a soft and supple but not sticky dough and the beauty of this method is that we're not going to get stuck with a too dry dough okay it's always way easier to need a little more flour in than try to add some water later so we generally want to start with something that's too sticky and then we can work in some more flour a few tablespoons at a time until it's perfect and that's it once we have achieved a dough that's soft but not sticky we'll go ahead and wrap that with plastic and then we'll just let it rest out of room temp for about an hour and yes of course if you're going to make this ahead you can leave it in the fridge no problem and that's it once our lazy dough is done we can move on to our lazy filling which is going to start with some ground pork to which we will add a whole bunch of crushed garlic as well as some freshly grated ginger root followed by a whole bunch of sliced green onions as well as their little cousin freshly sliced chives and by the way if you get sick a lot try to eat more garlic and types of onions they really are helpful but anyway we'll go ahead and season this up with some kosher salt as well as a whole bunch of freshly ground black pepper and then since i gave cayenne the day off we're gonna go with some korean chili flakes and then we will finish up with a splash of soy sauce as well as about a teaspoon of sesame oil and that is going to be it for our filling we'll simply take a couple forks and mix this until just combined and as you may have heard me say before the reason i like the forks is so we're not in here with our hot hands and fingers which will actually warm up the fat and can make things a little bit tough if you over mix it and that's it once our mixture has been properly forked we'll go ahead and throw a piece of plastic over that and toss it in the fridge until we're ready to use it and not just to give it time for those flavors to develop but it's almost always the case that the colder ground meat is the easier it is to work with so we'll pop that in the icebox as our grandparents used to say and then the only other prep we can do would be to flavor our chicken broth if we're going to flavor it at all but i definitely am with some vinegar and a little bit of soy sauce as well as a nice big pinch of those korean chili flakes we used earlier and technically this step is optional since we can just use regular chicken broth or stock but anyway i'll get into all that later and the point is here is you can put anything you want in this or nothing i mean you are after all the sloth of your lazy dumpling broth but in case it matters i really loved how this came out and then if we want we could use this right away but if we're going to make them later just go ahead and pop that in the fridge as well and that's it assuming we are ready to roll we'll go ahead and pull out our dough and i'm going to take about one quarter of what we made and on a floured surface i'm going to kind of roll that out until it's about the thickness of my thumb at which point we can switch to a rolling pin and somehow some way using just enough flour so it doesn't stick we'll want to roll this out into a band about three inches wide by however long that is okay let's say like 15 16 inches and then one kind of semi-important thing here once we have that about the size we want we should go ahead and dust the surface with flour and then flip it over so that we're pretty sure the surface underneath is not going to stick once we shape these plus now the side that's probably a little stickier is facing up which is going to be an advantage when we move to the next step but to hedge our bets after we do a little bit of fine tuning we'll go ahead and take some nice fresh cold water plus one clean fingertip and we'll go ahead and very lightly moisten the surface and we don't want to put too much on all right we don't want it wet we just want it a little bit sticky and then once that's been accomplished using the exact same water we will moisten our fingers and then use them to transfer on some filling right down the middle of our dough and as you may know wet fingers and hands do not stick to meat so a little bit of moisture on them is going to make this a lot easier and then once we've transferred the meat on and even it out again to about the thickness of our thumb we will go ahead and fold that dough over along the whole length and as we do we'll be sure to press it down which because our dough is kind of sticky should seal fairly easily and the whole strategy behind this lazy dumpling method is that instead of forming and shaping and crimping and pleating 16 individual dumplings we're basically just going to make one really long one and then divide that up into 16 pieces which again while not as aesthetically pleasing maybe is way way faster and easier and then what we can do once that's been completed if we want is take our bench scraper or maybe a pizza wheel and go ahead and trim off any of the excess which by the way if you don't mind a little extra dough in your dumpling is a totally unnecessary step but personally i just like the minimum amount of dough needed to hold in all the meat and then what we'll do before we divide these is dust on a little more flour and then roll the entire thing so the seams on the bottom and that's it once that's set this giant long dumpling is ready to be divided into lots of little ones which i'm going to do with the well-flowered side of my hand which i will be pressing down very firmly all the way to the table and for whatever reason i started by dividing this into two and then in the four and then into eight and eventually sixteen although in hindsight it probably would have been even better to start at one end and then simply karate chop these all the way to the other end but anyway i have no regrets especially since as you could probably notice i was not overly concerned with getting all these perfectly even and truth be told once these are cooked a little variation in size is not going to be very noticeable at all so i simply embrace their diversity and i continued on to the last step which would be to cut these apart with a bench scraper or pizza cutter or knife or a spatula or whatever tool you'll think will get this done and by the way do not worry if your dough does not seal on the edges that's totally fine okay so please don't worry about trying to pinch the dough on the ends together it will not be a problem and that's it i went ahead and transferred those onto a plate at which point we can pop those in the fridge until ready to cook them but i'm actually going to go ahead and cook up a serving now and what i'm going to do is place those seam side up in a little bit of oil in a pan over high heat and while you can just steam these or cook these in boiling water or broth i think by browning and caramelizing them a little bit in the oil first we get a much more interesting texture and flavor okay so we're sort of borrowing from the old pot sticker method here so i gave that first side about a minute or two and went ahead and flipped them over at which point it's time to pour in our flavored and or non-flavored chicken broth and then once that's been transferred in we will cover this and let it boil on high for about three minutes or so or until these are cooked through okay that's really going to depend on how big you made yours so if yours are bigger and you have to give them an extra minute go ahead that is just you cooking but anyway mine were done in about three minutes and considering how fast and lazily and uniform i made them i thought they looked really good so i went ahead and pulled those off and transferred them into a shallow bowl along with of course my flavored broth and by the way when you do this at home just go ahead and pour in all the broth okay because i was going to take some pictures i wanted the perfect level so i held back about three tablespoons which i have to admit is pretty frustrating to look at so you go ahead and dump all yours in and then i went ahead and finished mine up with a little more chili flake and a little scattering of those green onion tops i cut on the bias and that's it my lazy pork dumplings were done so i grabbed a spoon and went in for a taste and even though these are made with a completely different method the final result was an eating experience very similar to a classic soup dumpling which if you're not familiar is a gorgeous pork dumpling that actually contains meat and gelatinized broth inside so that when you steam them it liquefies and when you take a bite not only do you get the meat but you get all that luscious broth exploding in your mouth and since those are usually served with a little bit of soy and vinegar as i was taking spoonfuls of this it really was a remarkably similar thing plus these are a little bit safer because you can really severely burn your mouth with a soup dumpling as every single person who's ever eaten them will tell you so i didn't really set out to make a shortcut version of a soup dumpling but somehow someway i accidentally ended up with that and even though a soup dumpling is not fried first because the broth inside of those is so much richer and meatier i actually think that the caramelization here on the dough sort of kind of helped me get that effect so above and beyond this being an easier less fastidious method it really did remind me of eating one of the world's most incredible and by the way hardest to make dumplings but anyway that's it what i'm calling lazy pork dumplings what these things lack in visual beauty and gorgeous folds and pleats they more than make up for by tasting exactly the same which is why i really do hope you give them a try soon so head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts of more info as usual and as always enjoy hello this is chef john from foodwishes.com with steamed barbecue pork buns that's right believe it or not this is what they come out looking like if you don't know what you're doing which is surprisingly similar to what they look like if you did so yes my love for steamed pork buns far exceeds my skills in making them but that's basically the point i'm making as inexperienced as i am and as questionable as my techniques are i still achieve some fairly beautiful buns or bow as our chinese friends would call them so with that let's go ahead and get started with what is a very very simple dough and as usual that'll begin with some warm but not too hot water into which i'm going to sprinkle some dry active yeast and then what we usually like to do is let our yeast get about a 10 minute head start before we add the rest of the ingredients plus it also gives us a chance to check to make sure our yeast is not dead which i'm happy to report mine wasn't and what we'll do after about 10 minutes is go ahead and add the rest of the ingredients including a little bit of vegetable oil a little touch of white sugar and a whole bunch of self-rising flour which as you may know is nothing more than regular flour that has salt and baking powder milled into it and as usual if you do want to use all-purpose flour i will tell you how to make it into self-rising flour in the blog post and then what we'll do is grab a wooden spoon and give this a mix until it comes together to form a shaggy dough oh yeah you heard me a shaggy dough which is just like a regular dough except much much shaggier and basically looks something like this which does not look good yet but that's fine because what we'll do once it gets to this stage is go ahead and transfer it onto our work surface and we'll sort of push and press and squeeze it together until it finally comes together into a ball at which point we're going to need it until it's nice and smooth and as you know if it seems a little bit wet just sprinkle over a little more flour and if it seems a little dry you could add a little bit of water but it's much much harder adding water than adding flour which is why we always try to err on the side of having a little too wet of a dough than too dry of a dough speaking of which unlike most of our pizza dough and bread dough recipes this one is not going to be very sticky okay we still want it soft and smooth but we don't want this too wet and sticky so i basically needed mine for about 10 minutes or so until i ended up with something that looked and felt like this which felt really good and what we'll do once our dough is needed is transferred into a lightly oiled bowl and we'll flip that around to lightly coat it at which point we're going to cover this and let it rise in a warm spot for about two hours or until doubled and while we're waiting for that we can do a couple things for example make our barbecued pork filling and while i didn't happen to have any chinese barbecue pork on hand i did have a few leftover ribs and some pulled pork which i'm simply going to remove from the bone and go ahead and chop up and for these buns i wanted to keep my streak going of never having to use the same filling twice and i'll also go into this in the blog post and give you some links to some real filling recipes but this is what i went with this time and it really is a great technique to use up some leftover meat so i went ahead and chopped that up and added it to a bowl along with some fairly finely sliced green onions also known as scallions and then the only other things i'm putting in this very simple filling would be some cayenne pepper some sesame oil and enough hoisin to make this as saucy as you want and you'll sometimes hear people refer to hoisin as chinese barbecue sauce which i'm not sure is that accurate but it does have some similar elements including some sweetness but i should mention that the traditional filling for these things is quite a bit sweeter at least the ones i've had in san francisco so at least this time i'm doing more of a savory approach but anyway we'll go ahead and mix that up and once it's looking and tasting just like we want we'll go ahead and transfer that into the fridge and move on to set up our bamboo steamer or other steamer of your choice and first up we're going to have to add a couple inches of water to whatever pot we're going to set our steamer over which in my case is a dutch oven but you can also use a skillet or a frying pan and if you don't have a steamer there are tons of hacks online to show you how to steam without one but these things are relatively inexpensive and easy to find and i do recommend picking one up especially if you get addicted to these but anyway once that's set up we'll go back and check our dough which hopefully by now is doubled in size which means we'll give it the old poca poca to deflate it and we'll proceed to transfer that onto a lightly floured surface where i'm going to press it down before dividing it into two pieces and i'm actually going to save half for a wild and crazy experiment well actually not that crazy i just wanted to see how the dough is steamed the next day and then with the half i'm using i'm going to kind of roll that up into a tube-like shape so that eventually and hopefully i can cut six relatively even pieces and of course as i finished i realized just cutting that flat piece of dough would probably been easier but on the other hand this dough does feel really good but anyway somehow someway we'll divide that dough into six equal pieces and then we'll take each piece and sort of rub it against the surface to form it back into a ball and then eventually press it out into a disc and then once that's set we will roll each disc out to about an eighth of an inch thick it may be about four to five inches in diameter and then one of the few tips i know about making these is once that's rolled out you want to go around the outside pressing that edge a little bit thinner than the center which you can do very awkwardly with the rolling pin like i am and by the way traditionally they use a much thinner rolling pin it's more like a wooden dowel or if you wind can just go around with your fingers pressing and stretching and then what we'll do once at set is transfer in a spoonful of our filling and try to be careful not to touch it with your fingers otherwise you're going to stain your dough and then to close these is a great technique for forming little pleats all the way around which i've never mastered oh i'll try at the beginning but then i quickly give up and just start randomly pinching and pleating it anywhere and by the way i think one little issue i had here was the dough is a little bit dry so if you need to don't be afraid to moisten the edge of that dough with a little bit of water and then once i was done pinching and plating i went around trying to get those all folding over in the same direction which was only moderately successful and right about here is when i generally forget about technique and just sort of squeeze and pinch and twist everything so it seals at the top and yet as horribly unprofessional as that pleading is as you'll see once these are steamed it actually looks pretty good so please try to relax because you really only need to do it as bad as i did and then once form we'll go ahead and transfer these onto a little square of parchment paper we've cut out and that's just so they don't stick to the steamer and theoretically as you do these each one will get a little better although not for me my second one looked pretty much exactly the same but hey at least i got sauce on the dough and then what we'll do once these are prepped is go ahead and transfer them into our cold steamer all right don't turn it on yet because what we're going to do is cover these and proof them for about a half hour to 45 minutes before we do the actual steaming step and roughly 35 minutes later mine looked a little something like this and while these probably won't double in size they should puff up noticeably oh and i should mention i can fit six in here but i'm just doing three since it's always way easier to film fewer things and then what we'll do to finish these off is go ahead and cover them back up and we'll turn our heat on high and we're going to steam these for exactly 10 minutes but we do not start the timer until we can hear our water boiling and we can see steam coming out through the top and then once that happens we'll go ahead and set our timer for 10 minutes and do not under any circumstances peak and not only don't we get the peak wallet steaming we don't even get to peak after they're steamed because what we're going to do as soon as our timer rings is turn off the heat and then do absolutely nothing for 15 minutes all right do not under any circumstances take off the lid and the reason is that rapid change in temperature will cause our dough to collapse and instead of getting a beautiful smooth glossy surface they will actually form all kinds of dimples and dents and not look as good so somehow someway we will wait 15 minutes at which point we can uncover them so that we may gaze upon the aforementioned beautiful perfectly smooth surface and come on i don't want to brag but by looking at these you would have no idea i had no idea what i was doing so again please don't stress out too much when you're forming these as long as that dough at the top gets pinched together somehow these are going to look great and i should mention if you're wondering why these aren't snowy white like the ones from the takeout place that's because to achieve that you have to use a very special chinese dumpling flower which i never bothered buying but if you did want these to be snowy white you could go out and find some all right that's up to you i mean you guys are for all the chairman mouse of your barbecued pork bows but personally i don't mind the off-white i'm kind of off-white but anyway the point is they look fine so let me go ahead and grab one and pull off the paper so i can bite in to make sure they taste fine and fine they did taste okay my filling was good not great but good i felt like i needed more sauce and possibly a little more sweetness but anyway the filling is going to be up to you the real video here is for the technique and the dough which was absolutely perfect well not the technique but the dough okay was nice and soft and tender so i really was thrilled with the texture of that and i tend to use a pretty thin layer of the dough right the quote-unquote authentic ones i get here in san francisco probably have about twice as thick a layer of dough so it is a little more bready with a little less filling but anyway that's it my take on steen barbecue pork buns like i said i'll share a few links in the post in case you want to make the real filling but if you do happen to have some leftover grilled or barbecued meat this really was a delicious and pretty fun way to use it up which is why i really do hope you give this a try soon so head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy hello this is chef john from foodwishes.com with spetzla or as we americans prefer to pronounce it spatzle that's right i'm going to show you how to make the world's smallest dumplings and while technically that's what they are i prefer to think of these as the world's easiest free-form pasta since the taste and texture are very similar and they will pretty much work with any of your favorite pasta preparations plus above and beyond all that this stuff is way faster and easier to make than pasta as you're about to see so with that let's go ahead and get started with our spatula batter which is made with some all-purpose flour to which we will add one large egg of course we'll also need some salt which we always do as well as for me a little pinch of cayenne which i'm assuming is rarely added in germany but hey they're lost and then we'll go ahead and finish this up with a spoon of creme fraiche or sour cream or yogurt and then last but not least a nice splash of whole milk and believe it or not that's it and once all that's together we will take a whisk and mix this smooth and then evaluate for consistency okay because what we're looking for is a battery that sort of drips slowly off the whisk and not really run off the whisk okay we don't want this too liquidy so we will give it a mix and check it out and you see how that's kind of pouring off quickly okay so i think this is a little too thin and to adjust that we will simply add a little bit of flour and conversely if it's too thick you'll add a little bit of milk but anyway we're going to stir in some more flour and check it out again and now as you can hopefully see it's still dripping off the whisk but much slower okay so for me that's looking very good and then once we've adjusted the texture until we think it's just right let's go ahead and clean off that whisk with a spatula and i'll go ahead and give you one more look at the viscosity we're shooting for okay so forget the exact measurements you're going to have to adjust until you have something that looks like this and then once the batter set we're going to need some kind of spatula making tool with which to push our batter through into our boiling water and while you could buy something specifically designed for this you don't need to because you probably already have one of these your standard cheese grater works perfectly for this operation as long as the holes are at least this big it's going to work right and by the way we're not going to use the side to grace the cheese we're going to use the other side also known as the smooth side and how this works is we simply take some of our batter and transfer that onto our grater and we use our spatula to push it through which again is why we want to make sure we're using the smooth side okay nobody wants grated rubber in their spatule and that is it a pretty simple technique except of course we're not going to do it back into the bowl we're going to do that into some boiling salted water but before we do that let's do this we want to first prep whatever sauce or substance our finished spatula are going to go into and my personal favorite and very classic choice would be some toasted butter so what we'll do is melt some butter over medium heat and simply cook it swirling occasionally until that toes to a nice golden brown and yes if you want to go darker feel free or if you don't want it toasted and just want to melt the butter that also works great okay so how you finish this is going to be up to you you are after all the hansel and gretel of your spatzle but anyway you can see how far i toasted mine and once that's set assuming we've brought some salted water to a boil we are ready to extrude our batter so what we'll do is place our batter on top of our grater a couple spoonfuls at a time oh and by the way one way you can tell your texture was perfect the batter won't drip through until you push it with a spatula okay there's a very old german saying that i just made up if it drips before you push add some flour so you don't have mush so not to brag but this was looking just about perfect and as you may notice that's all sort of clumping together in one spot and there's two reasons for that one is i'm just looking at the viewfinder and not paying attention because i should be moving that greater around more as i'm dropping it in but also i could have this boiling more furiously but i didn't because it was fogging the lens having said that it's not a problem because when we take the strainer and give it a stir those will all separate beautifully which reminds me these are considered done when they float to the top which as you saw happens very quickly so this really is a super fast recipe and then once those are floating what we'll do is take a strainer and simply transfer those into our melted butter or whatever sauce you happen to be using and we'll repeat that very easy process until our batter is gone and by the way this was a very small batch i did just using one egg it's only enough for like two portions but the good news is you could scale this up as much as you want and if you are going to make larger quantities you can totally do this step ahead and then just reheat these in the sauce when you're ready to serve so something to keep in mind but anyway we'll continue on until our batter's been used up and all our spatula has been transferred to our pan at which point we have a few options since everything's hot we could just toss this and serve it but personally i like to put the heat back on medium and give these a little bit of a saute for a minute or two okay i don't really brown them although some people do and that is a very nice way to go but i'm just going to cook these in that hot butter for about a minute or so just to give them a little bit of time to absorb that beautiful nutty flavor and of course as always we definitely want to give it a taste to see if it needs a little pinch of salt which mine did so i tossed them in and gave it one laster as well as one last taste and once we're happy with it we can turn off the heat and then possibly finish with a little bit of fresh herb i had some italian parsley so i'm using that but some freshly snipped chives are also a wonderful choice so i stirred that in and that's it our schmitzler is ready to serve up and yes i'm pretty sure i've pronounced that differently every single time i've said it i should have just stuck with spatzle which by the way translates to little sparrows so you could always go with that instead but anyway we'll spoon that up and it's wonderful served as is or maybe with a little gradient of cheese or even better yet maybe make a little space in the middle and garnish this with a piece of cider braised pork shoulder oh yeah that would be a great pairing and i finished that up with a little extra creme fresh and pinch of parsley and normally at this point i would say stay tuned for the pork video but you know what i think we already did it but i'll check and if we don't we'll do one but anyway let's forget about that luscious pork for a second let me go in for a taste so i can see how i did on my special and you know what i did pretty darn good they have a beautiful pasta like flavor which is amplified by our toasted butter and the texture was just right okay firm but not chewy tender but not soft these really were spot on and uber delicious and as you can imagine just absolutely amazing with any kind of braised meat and as you well know we're heading right into braised meat season so i was very happy with how this came out i mean i would make these even if they were hard and complicated but they're not as you saw they're super easy and fast to make so for all those reasons and more i really do hope you give these a try soon so head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy hello this is chef john from food wishes.com with roman style gnocchi that's right these don't look like gng which is okay because they don't taste like gnaki either but despite that they are in fact a type in yaki and an unbelievably delicious type at that in fact i'm going to make a bold prediction but once you see how easy these are to make they will become your new favorite side dish so despite the possibly confusing name i mean personally i would have called them whatever the italian word for hockey puck is but anyway possibly confusing names aside i am very excited to show you these and we'll go ahead and begin with the star of the show semolina which kinda sorta looks like a fine grain cornmeal but it's actually made from derm wheat and it's probably best known for its use in pasta making but as you're hopefully about to find out it works amazingly well in these and the first step in this process is to basically make a semolina porridge and for that we're going to use some milk that we pour into a saucepan to which we will add some salt and what we're going to want to do is bring this up to a simmer on medium-high heat but this is not actually ever going to get to a real simmer because what we're going to do as soon as bubbles just start to break the surface is go ahead and whisk in our semolina and we probably don't want to just dump it all in we will add it in a steady stream as shown and fair warning this is going to thicken up very quickly especially since i use a little more semolina than most recipes but anyway we're going to whisk that in and like i said it's going to thicken up really quickly in fact check this out as i was stirring i decided to change the camera angle for no apparent reason so i stopped and went from this to this in literally five seconds which is fine that's what we want because what we're going to do at this point is switch to a wooden spoon and turn our heat down to medium low and then what we'll do once our heat's lowered and we switch to a nice sturdy spoon is simply cook that stirring on medium-low for about seven to ten minutes and i say seven to ten because virtually every recipe says ten minutes and yet i usually get tired of stirring around seven minutes and stop and it always works so i guess we'll make that the range and by the way if you happen to be thinking i would have just started with a wooden spoon well you know what that's a good thought and an even better idea but anyway i never seem to remember to do that and i always end up starting with the whisk and switching to the spoon but regardless like i said once we're on medium low we will simply cook that for about seven to ten minutes at which point if everything's gone according to plan your semolina porg should look something like this and what we'll do once that's been accomplished is remove that from the heat and stir in the rest of the ingredients which will include some cubed up cold butter a whole bunch of freshly grated parmesan cheese and two egg yolks and because that mixture is very hot and we don't want scrambled egg yolks we'll go ahead and stir that vigorously until everything's combined and i should mention a lot of recipes actually have you add the butter to the milk but i think you'd get a better texture if you add it with the cheese and the yolks but the one drawback because that butter's sort of melting as you're mixing is that it can make this a little trickier to combine and at certain points it might look like it's separating but don't worry just like some of those cookie dough recipes we've done just keep mixing and eventually will all come together beautifully and if not and it kind of looks separated just switch back to the whisk and you really shouldn't have a problem and then what we'll do as soon as that's been successfully combined is switch to a spatula and clean off that spoon before transferring that into a prepared pan and by prepared i just mean lined with some plastic wrap and in case you're keeping score at home that is your standard quarter sheet pan so we'll go ahead and transfer that in and spread it out nice and evenly but don't worry about getting the top perfectly smooth because what we're going to do is take another piece of plastic wrap and place that over the top and sort of gently press it down and smooth it out and that is pretty much it for the first phase of roman style gnocchi because all we have left to do is chill this until it's firm enough to cut which i'm going to do in the fridge because it's faster so i'm going to go ahead and pop that in the fridge for about a half hour or so and while we're waiting for that to firm up we can go ahead and butter our baking dish and today i'm gonna be using this beautiful round french style gratin dish but any kind of casserole dish will work so we'll go ahead and brush the bottom of that with butter and then fast forward about a half hour later at which point as you'll see our semolina porridge has firmed up nicely so let's go ahead and unwrap that as it is now officially ready to cut which i like to do with a round biscuit cutter because i enjoy what i'm told as the traditional circular shape but if you do want to save a little time you can just cut these in squares these are really going to cook the same no matter which shape you make but like i said i do prefer the classic round and i should mention as you're doing these do not discard the trimmings well we're going to use those in a second as you'll see so we'll go ahead and cut out our gnocchi and transfer those into our dish and as you can see i'm going to overlap those slightly and then what we'll do once those are placed in is gather together all our trimmings and then we'll simply wet our fingers and palms and as you'll see almost as if by magic we're going to be able to smoosh all those scraps together ah damp hands is there nothing they can't do so as you can see with a little bit of water on your hands you should be able to press all those trimmings together at which point we can flatten that out between two pieces of plastic and we should be able to cut out three or four more and while these certainly aren't going to be as perfect as the first batch it still works perfectly fine and once these are baked they're going to look awesome so we'll go ahead and make a few extra from those scraps and place those in at which point we're going to top these with a generous amount of melted butter maybe even a very generous amount so we'll go ahead and drizzle that over and brush that on and then once that's been applied we'll go ahead and finish this off with a little dusting of cayenne no your roman friend is right that is not traditional but we usually don't let that stop us and then last but not least we will finish this off with some more freshly grated parmesan and not just any parmesan we definitely need to go with the parmigiano-reggiano and once that surface has been covered as well as select parts of our kitchen towel we are ready to bake so let's go ahead and transfer that into the center of a 425 degree oven for about 25 minutes or until beautifully browned and basically looking like one of the greatest things you've ever seen come out of an oven i mean come on look at that and you might be wondering those edges look crispy but are they well let's grab a fork and listen even over the sound of my oven fan you could hear how crispy that is which for me is exactly why roman style gnocchi is so awesome you get this incredible combination of that crispy buttery outside encasing that creamy custardy inside it's just unreal and in addition to looking great feeling great and tasting great this stuff's also amazingly versatile yes of course it could be served as a side dish with some meatballs and maybe a salad but it's equally spectacular as a first course or pasta course or maybe even throw a wild mushroom sauce over this and do it as a main course so many options but of course that's up to you you are the king george of your savory baked porridge but this time i did go with it as a side dish for meatballs which by the way were not very good i didn't have time to make homemade and tried some from a new market down the street and they weren't great but i wasn't even mad because he's amazing yaki ala romana provided more than enough pleasure for the whole plate it is just insanely good but anyway that's it roman style gnocchi like i said in the intro the name might throw you off a little bit but give it a try anyway because i really do think these are going to become one of your favorite side dishes or main courses or pasta courses well you get the idea so i really do hope you give these a try soon head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 191,398

Keywords: Dumplings, Pork, Soup, dumpling, recipe, chef, john, food, wishes, cooking, asian, Xiao Long Bao, Potstickers, Pot, Stickers, Recipe, dumplings, appetizer, chinese, foodwishes, recipes, pork, Spätzle, Spaetzle, pasta, macaroni, german, side dish, starch, fast, easy, Gnocchi alla Romana, Gnocchi, Roman-Style, Semolina, Baked, gratin, italian, Steamed, Buns, Char Siu Bao, BBQ, barbecue, bread, meat, snack, party, steaming, dumpling recipe, bao, bao buns, asian cooking, italian cooking, german cooking, asian cuisine, asian recipes

Id: O9u3QZbEzZg

Length: 45min 29sec (2729 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 09 2021