Perfect Potstickers - Easy Pork Pot Stickers Recipe

[Music] hello this is chef john from foodwishes.com with 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 going to get started with and we'll begin with one pound of freshly ground pork to which 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 going to 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 it's really fun to say shaggy dough so we'll go ahead and mix that until it looks like this at which point we'll flower 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 disc 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 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's 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 seven 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] you

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 1,386,765

Keywords: Potstickers, Pot, Stickers, Recipe, dumplings, dumpling, appetizer, chinese, chef, john, foodwishes, cooking, food, recipes, pork

Id: GSmM00YekMc

Length: 10min 8sec (608 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 20 2017