How to Make Gyoza | Dear Test Kitchen

yeah i like that sound [Music] we're here today with sunoko sakai i'm going to brag for you oh thank you one of the best you know a true expert in japanese home cooking i would say oh thank you and featuring your new cookbook japanese home cooking how long have you considered yourself a teacher of japanese cuisine would you say well i have to say that i'm more of a student than a teacher but um i have been teaching for about 10 years what are we making today um so today we're making gyoza and gyoza is a is a dumpling it's something that we learned from the chinese and we've kind of made it into our own and it's a pan-fried dumpling with a meat filling that's what we're doing today [Music] so we have napa cabbage and some nita this is a garlic chive okay and if you don't you could usually find this in any asian market but if you can't find it you could use scallions okay or onions even and um and then the ginger and there's garlic now some people do not put garlic in the gyoza or in in dumplings and uh so this is just something that is optional okay but like a personal preference it's a personal preference but i love to put a lot of cabbage because it makes it crispy and uh it makes it juicy the gills are juicy yeah so let's just go start you know this is a nice napa cabbage i'm just going to cut it so in the recipe it depends on how much how much meat you're going to be using right we have about a pound of meat and that should make about 60 gyoza dumplings yeah so this is good for if you want to sort of feed a group have a party yes and i like to use a white parts also because that gives it the crunch right yeah we could come back and make it even finer but right now i'm just gonna go through it i like the idea of what you said adding cabbage to the filling uh-huh makes it juicier yes because the pork is going to have its own juiciness but the cabbage even makes it that much more yes juicy and also ammami is sweetness yeah i'm looking for a little sweetness umami also saltiness right because it has some salt and soy sauce in it and the sesame oil will also give it some fragrance sake will just make you happy [Laughter] and the ginger will give it the spiciness so we're actually looking for the five flavors and i talk about that in my cookbook yeah about five flavors five colors you know to awaken all your senses but no no single ingredient should really overwhelm too much right so i don't like a dumpling that has too much garlic right or it's super spicy and um sometimes i find like my students come to my dumpling class and i see them like putting tons of garlic in and i'm going whoa yeah you know i remember that lesson as a young cook where you think like well if two cloves is good then five cloves must be better but it's not always true yeah you're looking for balance more yeah yeah aggressiveness i think so okay so i'm using like three or four cups of and this is gonna let you get started yeah yeah because you're just standing there you gotta put me to work yeah i'm gonna put you to work and where's the salt let's see and i'll continue with that chopping so this cabbage gets salted and the salt is going to draw some of the moisture out of your cabbage yeah it's going to draw out the excess moisture and give it flavor but you don't want to over salt it just um you do just a pinch or two yeah yeah do a pinch or two and start massaging it okay and i mean i think we should have done it all at once but um just to get i needed a job yeah i needed to put you to work do you remember when you first became passionate about japanese cooking i think the most mesmerizing experience i had as a young cook is watching my grandma make rice cook rice yeah because rice is so fundamental in our culture by the way rice's gyoza is always served with rice it's like start and starch but um we like to eat everything with rice yeah so my childhood memories yes making making rice watching my grandmother rinse rice was very a beautiful experience because she would cook the rice on a uh in the living room on a on a stove top yeah and then she would tell me stories wow and the storytelling part is is just part of my the way i fell in love with food is because it was time i spent in the kitchen with my grandma yeah right or my mother so my grandmother didn't do dumplings dumplings a chinese dish right my mother was the one that did dumplings and and because she had so many little hands little helpers oh right we got to always do something with her in the kitchen so this is good but i um so see all this water that you could see yeah wow yeah so let's uh get rid of that water okay there's so much moisture yeah when you add a little bit of salt it's just so this is an important step if you didn't squeeze out that moisture all that would be too much liquid in here yeah it gets kind of soggy yeah yeah i like napa cabbage in my gyoza but you could do this with cabbage too cabbage is really good so we finished massaging the cabbage we squeezed all the water out we did it in two batches just to give me a job when you're working at home you could do it all at once yeah next step i guess is the garlic chives yes we have the garlic chives and um so while i chop this maybe you could start peeling the ginger sure so here's the garlic chive the ends um you want to trim them off because they're they're hard let's chop it sometimes what i do is uh when i want the ginger to be softer i just soak it yeah in water and it softens it so that's a nice trick to have garlic is not really something that was part of our culture and even though we're very close to china and korea japanese people didn't really cook with garlic much and even in the older the kaiseki cuisines you don't see that but the modern palette has changed and gyoza so again my mother would never put garlic in any of her cooking huh yeah but because it's such a powerful flavor it's too powerful it's so overwhelming yeah and interestingly my daughter-in-law's chinese and for certain dumplings she her mother does not use garlic interesting so but ginger yes okay so i think we've done everything we need to do as far as chopping this we just need to chop that let's just chop that that ginger sure okay so you can see that there's some prep involved but once you do this prep you could keep the gyoza meat yeah in the fridge for a couple days this is great so you put in the hard work you can make the filling yeah a couple days ahead of time yeah and then invite people over to wrap it up right so it looks like a lot of work but this is a really good party food do you ever get very creative with the fillings and go outside the box with non-traditional ingredients oh yes yes so um i do i have done gluten-free wrappers with like millet flour and you know rice flour yeah i've done kale spinach shiitake mushrooms for vegan people yeah there is really no rule what i do is i go into my fridge and i look at okay what i do i need to get rid of yeah that cabbage has been sitting there for a while it's starting to look kind of sad yeah but maybe i could rescue it right yeah yeah carrots um potatoes sweet potatoes oh yeah yeah don't don't you don't have to stick to the vegetables in my in my my book but ginger i think ginger and scallions and the cabbage is always nice to to have yeah but if you don't have the cabbage use kale or i would not use lettuce though right lettuce is a little bit um it's kind of watery it's wimpy wimpy yeah yeah a wimpy vegetable i'd rather eat that raw right yeah in a salad for the folks at home if you like getting creative with your dumpling filling leave a comment i want to hear what you put in your dumplings yeah and that would be a fun fun exercise right yeah [Music] we have our ground pork garlic chives ginger minced garlic cabbage time to mix it all together yes okay there's a few more ingredients we're going to add actually right so let me just go ahead and add the yeah dump it in dump it in so here we have a nice combination you know i just noticed that there's still some water coming out oh yeah well it sat there right the salt kept working yeah the salt kept working so this is a good place where you don't you want to add the broth you don't want too much of this soggy water so so this was soggy water so maybe you don't need all of the broth you see this is where you make a little adjustment but the broth is going to add flavor i'm just going to this is instead of a half a cup i'm just doing a quarter cup and it's going to be a feel yeah yeah that's honest cooking you know i think a recipe has to be more like a guideline yeah always be yeah 100 liters right and this is actually comes with practice a little bit yeah you're going to taste your gyoza and say oh this was a little bit dry maybe next time i'm going to add a little bit more of the broth right right this is a sesame oil to give it a little bit more umami we have the the five principles that i was talking about there's there's ammami which is the sweetness and this is the umami from the the pork these greens some of it it depends maybe a little bitterness right from the from the garlic from the garlic chives and spiciness from the ginger and the garlic so we're pretty much covered in terms of flavors right and even colors right uh we don't have red in here yeah but that's going to come later with the chili okay so i'll add a little bit of yeah to two teaspoons yeah two teaspoons yeah yeah so that was about yeah that was about right and then a little soy sauce um now there's all kinds of soy sauce uh when it comes to soy sauce just a regular dark soy sauce japanese soy sauce is what i usually use you know and you don't want to make your dumplings too salty right because the seasoning is at the table one tablespoon of soy sauce that's it but you always want to have a little sake a little little socket goes in here and this is again a tenderizer and also gives it a mommy a mommy sweetness yeah so now we're ready to massage so do you want to be in charge of that sure yeah now once everything is mixed together yeah will you take a little piece of the raw filling and fry it off just to taste it to see that you like the taste of it or do you just go ahead and start filling it yeah that's a good idea actually i think it's a nice idea for home cooks yeah if you're doing dumplings or even if you're doing meatballs at home take a little piece of the raw meat filling and fry it off and taste it and that way you can adjust the seasoning before you commit to making 60 dumplings or 100 meatballs or whatever you're about to do yeah that's a really good idea and i just yeah please so it's like a real you're like kneading it yeah yeah and i know that i don't need to add any more liquid in this because it feels pretty pretty wet yeah if anything maybe i would have done a little less broth but i don't know if you've tasted these um din tamfong chinese dumplings that when you bite into it the juice pops yeah and it's so hot that you have to eat it with a spoon oh wow well this is that juiciness right but when you're really nice yeah yeah it's nice but when you're folding the dumplings you have to do it really fast and fry it right away otherwise the wrappers will get soggy so this is the thing is um you see like it at these frozen dumplings yeah and you just go straight to the the pan with them yeah when you're making fresh dumplings you don't want the dumplings to be sitting there right like in the fridge yeah and it won't taste that good can you fill the gyoza and then freeze them and cook them later that way i mean you could or you'd rather yeah i just rather yeah and when i do that i actually drop it in the broth yeah and turn them into wonton soups yeah but when they're frozen when they're frozen yeah but for for frying i want them to be fresh so see it's not as wet now because it's right it almost uh emulsified yeah you're right it's a different texture it is right yeah it smells nice now in your book uh before you start to work with the filling you have it rest for a little while and uh yeah i do because it has a chance to absorb the flavors i see yeah remember i said that uh when i don't feel like cooking i make gyoza like i just go and see what scraps i have in the and just put it i don't let it rest so this can work with it yeah oh definitely i'm just you know if you want to really impress your friends maybe you should rest it but yeah it's going to be fine either you know either way yeah that's good advice in the home cook you know work with it right away yeah or yeah if it rests in the fridge the flavor's only going to grow yeah massage it for a little while and see how the fat has emulsified and it's become stickier yeah and it's going to be easier for you to handle when you're wrapping so the texture looks beautiful we almost forgot the salt yeah okay two teaspoons yeah and you know what i always start you know one yeah see how it tastes yeah i think one maybe one is good sure so we have a board to work on yes we split our filling in half so you have a little station and i have a little workstation a bowl with water is going to help us to fold the wrappers yeah and then i want to talk about the wrappers themselves right because there's different brands there's different styles right for gyoza you want to use round wrappers and they could come in thick and thin sizes so this is a matter of preference yeah but i um like them on the thin side yeah and and big if possible this is actually a really good size it's very standard and fresh but don't use the square ones the square ones are for sumai and the round ones are for gyoza so what's the first step here okay so let's uh lay out the wrappers on a dry cutting board let's make some rows here sure so what you're gonna do is you're gonna take um about a teaspoon not quite a tablespoon but yeah yeah and if if you over stuff them you're gonna break your wrapper so but if you understaff them they're gonna stuff them they're not gonna it won't be as delicious no so it's it takes a little practice yeah but line them up and see you yours is a little bit smaller than mine which is a good place to start i i felt like as a beginner i didn't want to overstuff them and break them when you're working at home do you always use this technique where you lay out a bunch of wrappers always yeah always yeah it's faster than doing one at a time oh yeah you don't do one at a time what you want to do is um with the upper part this is how i do it with the upper part and the wrapping is one at a time okay yeah all right so you're gonna hold it in your left hand and or right hand if you're left-handed and then you're just going to pinch the top like this pinch it okay and then we're going to start making some folds right now if you are not comfortable with folding this could be it you just pinch the whole way along this could be your dumpling like this you leave it like this you could you could leave it open and fry it like this if you like or you could just do so the pinch once to do the folds yeah you could do one to three folds okay so you're gonna hold it like hold it and then i'm going to fold it towards the center yeah and pinch with my left thumb and then fold it again and i do i like to do three okay and some of the meat might come out but just kind of clean it up and then once you finish the left side then you work on the the right side then you work on the left side so again you want to make sure there's some water here right and then you fold it towards the center one two and three see like that and you gave a little bit of water on the outside to help those folds stick yes and don't worry if a little bit of the meat comes out that's when you know you have to adjust how much filling you have to put and then you line it up you have to pinch it and depending on the freshness of the of the dumpling wrapper it may not want to hold together so you have to make sure that you add a little water and pinch it so that's your first dumpling let's see how i did one side already okay one two three do the other side so you hold it in the center and you bring it toward the middle yeah one two and three yeah and then fold then give it yeah there there we go beautiful i feel pretty good about this yeah you're beautiful okay then put it here while you're working with these yeah would you want to cover up your stack of oh yes it's how it's starting to curl yeah so what i'd like you to do is actually keep them in the bag uh or put a a cloth on top right yes because the longer it's exposed to the air the drier it will get yeah definitely um and some people will pleat it all in one direction right yeah and uh that's just a personal thing you could even play with that if you like to try that i like the way you taught me just now holding it in the center yeah and folding it yeah toward the middle i find that easier the other times i've tried to make dumplings and i try to fold it all in one direction yeah i start with big folds and then they get smaller and smaller as i run out of room yeah i i could never do that really well so here we go so i just wet the top half of this dumpling and i'm going to fold it and pinch the center like that and then i'm going to wet the front half of my dumpling wrapper and then hold it with my left hand and then i'm going to use my right hand to pleat it that's one pleat that's two pleat and this is the third plate and then you pinch see so this is pleated on one side and then we will hold the pleat pleated side and then pleat the left side lift side is a little trickier if you're not left-handed but you gather it up and you have a dumpling [Music] so we folded our dumplings yes i like that mine and yours are pretty mixed in there you can't quite tell oh i know you did i feel pretty good good i know they look very nice i think yeah yeah so what we're going to do is a little bit of oil in a non-stick skillet these get seared first and then we add water and we steam them right okay so let's just add some oil and you want to make sure that the pan is nicely heated oh yep it's smoking already so and when we're searing the dumplings you don't want to burn them so if you see too much smoke coming out bring it to the side and just let it cool off a little bit right yeah yeah see it's sizzling a little bit so that's good and if you notice that in areas that there's not enough oil i'm just kind of moving it around i like that you're taking the gyoza and dragging it through the oil yes just so that you get that crispy bottom and then you push it so at this stage it's not that hot right and it's still dry on the top so you could use your fingers right and not burn yourself now when you cook gyoza you like to pretty much fill the skillet you don't have there be very much empty space in the pan right just a little bit you know yeah if it's too snug then they will you'll have areas that are not cooked thoroughly so right so like a single even layer yeah see how many we could get in this so you notice that i'm like looking at the first one that i put in to make sure that these are not cooking too fast and you need to work pretty quickly yeah to make sure that they all are in the pan yeah so let's just see how this one is doing see this one is nearly ready right see uh sort of a medium golden yeah so i and i so you like to get it pretty dark yeah i like to get it pretty dark but not yeah just before it burns so these need a little bit more maybe raise it just one notch and i noticed that the side on the right could use a little oil see how dry it is yeah so let's just just touch mine yeah touch more on the side sure and that will help it cook faster too yeah there we go right because you want to be able to hear that sizzle see now we're hearing it it's interesting if there's no sound then your pan is too dry yeah right yeah i like that sound okay it's happier now but if you put too much oh see this is happy because that's they're in the middle yeah and you could also do is all right move the middle yeah yeah but if you touch them too much they might fall apart but yeah now they're all happy they're all happy and i think i'm almost ready to add the you want to check one let's see sure yeah that's nice color yeah pretty nice right okay right so right at the moment when you feel like they're nice and golden brown on the bottom yeah we're gonna add our water and you sit about a third of the way up onto yes to the dumplings because everyone's skillet is different and you've added a different amount of dust this one needs a little bit more right yeah so go ahead and have a lid next to it you got to put the lid right away otherwise you're going to have a lot of splashing around and people get burnt so the lid is important too because we're steaming the top of these yes that's how to make sure that they're fully cooked right and then you could have a you could just relax yeah now's the time to drink the rest of the sake yeah where is it [Music] while the gyoza are cooking we're going to make a little dipping sauce right so usually you just give the individual plates and you just let them do the seasoning so each person makes their own but i if they've never done it before i guide them and you could do a little bit of soy sauce and this is la you la you is uh chili oil and it's got uh it's pretty pretty spicy and uh i have a recipe for chili that's allow you in my cookbook oh cool um see that's all just a few drops yeah and this is hot okay and then a little vinegar is nice like black vinegar yeah or you could just do lemon okay and i i like to just wait until you know i get the gyozas but there's your sauce and you let the diners just do their mixing yeah and eat it i like that so if you want it a little bit more spicy or more chili oh yeah if you like the acid you put more yeah yeah yeah so make it your own and you have yes this is a ginger yeah pickled ginger amazing ginger you see this this it's also called gary you see this at the sushi sushi bars this is a mild one i just thought it would be really nice with the gyoza any kind of pickle would be nice ah see almost all of it has evaporated i could hear the sound changed and that indicated to me that they were almost ready so what you do is you just this was a the side that we the row that we put in last so these are the ones that would be cooked right right more or less so now what we want to do is bring up the heat a little bit well it's pretty high seven so now i want to dry it right you're going to wait until the water is completely evaporated and then that re-crisps the bottom right and sometimes i add a little bit of oil okay to give it that extra extra bit of sizzle and umami yeah but let's see how it goes sure sometimes the pork is so fatty that it doesn't need it releases its own right right yeah these look very good they do don't they so you should do more than 30 dumplings right you should do 60 right because 180 the first batch is always the toughest right yeah it's always if you get the first batch done and then it becomes easier a little bit easier yeah yeah that's why i told you the first batch is for the family second batch is for your guest yeah but it doesn't usually work that way okay let's see if i could get these off it seems like when you work from the side of this pan it's much better i think that if you let it dry a little bit it's going to be easier right see this is coming off yeah yeah so that looks great it should be okay yeah those are beautiful yeah those are perfect see i told you this wow once the pan gets seasoned it's much better see oops this one broke but it's okay do you want to try um getting it out yeah i think at this point it would be easier easier for this one so just really work on the bottom part and yeah kind of scrape it off right yeah and yeah there we go beautiful oh yeah yeah these came out really nice now you were saying that you like to just sort of make a mountain of dumplings at home yeah that you're not too precious about it oh yeah i don't like rose it's like when i go to a ramen shop or something and they they you order groza and you get these five little stinky gyozas and i go my husband says i like your ghost is better you're just piled up and yeah and one big mess a mountain of is better than five little cute ones right so five little precious ones right so he he really likes my gyozas and you could see between the two of us we will eat a whole plate like this wow yeah you're living a great life yeah i do with just whatever i find in the in the fridge right yeah yeah so it really uh is probably the most entertaining uh these are beautiful dish that you could have uh instantly i think there we go okay i get to taste the first dumpling let's see so what i do is i put the soy sauce [Music] and then a little bit of chili oil and um and some a little bit of lemon juice right and then eat it yeah yeah and it's going to be hot so don't just put it in your mouth but take a bite a little bit yeah it's hot it's so good i love how crispy these were able to get yeah right it's almost counterintuitive you think by adding the water that it would make them soggy but once the water evaporates and they're fully cooked they really do crisp back up it's really nice did you put a little lemon these are so good good yeah i mean what's better than a freshly made homemade dumpling this is very good right and really it's best to gather around the kitchen you know and just eat it right off the out of the pan and really letting it sit right you don't want these to even get to room temperature really they should be thank you so much thank you so much i really enjoyed making dumplings with them you know i came into this feeling you asked me off camera you said you know how confident do you feel making dumplings and i said not that confident i hadn't done it very much but this was so easy i think any home cook should feel confident give it a try it's not that hard and it's so much fun i hope you try it thank you so much yeah [Music] you

Channel: Food52

Views: 130,345

Keywords: Food52, food, cooking, recipe, chef, foodie, cook, home cooking videos, recipes, gyoza, gyoza dumplings, gyoza sauce, how to make gyoza, how to make gyoza from scratch, how to make gyoza dumplings, how to make gyoza sauce, pork gyoza, dumplings recipe, Sonoko Sakai, gyoza recipe japanese, dear test kitchen, josh cohen

Id: 6pDKP4hD_kg

Length: 30min 19sec (1819 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 13 2020