Oh the irony – homemade dumpling wrappers

*cue Alanis Morissette*

It is so very ironic that my last post was one for my blog anniversary. A post wishing myself a better (blog) year and determination for more consistent posts. That was three months ago.

My excuse? I have plenty. But let’s just settle with one ambiguos one: I’m going through…………..some stuff. It’s been going on for a while now but in the last three months, it really started to eat me up. I wasn’t even cooking much. Come mealtimes, I find myself racking my brains for the fastest and easiest, yet not altogether unhealthy (you know, cos of the kids) meals. More often then not, you’d find sandwiches and carrot sticks being served in this household. You know it’s bad when a foodie loses interest in food.

It’s not all wracks and ruins though. If you follow me on instagram (corianderandgarlic) it will paint you a very different picture from the sob story I’ve just told you. To be fair though, it is much easier to instagram than to blog.

Some days are better than others and I find myself in the mood to make something again. Like that one night, when all was still in the house, I decided that I wanted dumplings; so I started to make the wrappers that night.

I usually make my own wrappers because:

1. It’s better than store-bought.
2. There are only frozen ones available at the store and I don’t exactly live around the corner from an Asian grocery store.
3. I’m too lazy. To go to the store, that is.

How are the wrappers better, you ask? They are so much more elastic than store bought ones, which means, they are more forgiving. If used fresh, you don’t even need water to seal the dumplings, just pinch. That being said, if you do keep them for later use, they do dry out around the edges and you will need water to seal the dumplings. I don’t know if these freeze well because I haven’t had to chance to use the ones I had frozen. I’ll update you when I do.

I used this batch to wrap some pork dumplings which I later steamed. I prefer to steam my dumplings because I find that it yields a much better texture .i.e. more bite to the skin.  I find that the skin gets very soft, almost to the point of mushy, when boiled. Perhaps it’s because I roll the wrappers out so thin. I shall experiment with a thicker wrapper next time.  For now, I’m very happy to have my dumplings steamed.

The plan is to post the recipe for the pork dumplings soon-ish. In the next few days, I hope. In the meantime, try wrapping these delicious vegetarian dumplings instead. I promise you’ll love them.

Excuse the bad picture. I can only do this at night and I can’t afford all the fancy lightning.

 

 

Dumpling wrappers

Makes 50

Ingredients

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• ½ tsp salt
• 1 tsp vegetable oil
• ¾ cups hot water

Directions

• In a large heatproof bowl, combine the flour and salt.
• Add in hot water and oil and stir vigorously with the weapon of your choice. I like chopsticks.
• You’ll be presented with flaky lumps of dough. Knead the lumps together with your hands (it’s not that hot) until you get a relatively smooth dough.
• Wrap the dough in cling foil  or put it in a plastic baggie and rest it for 20 mins.
• After 20 mins, the dough will be soft and smooth. Time to roll it out.
• If you’re cheating and using a pasta roller like i did, simply roll it out as thin as you like ( I rolled till setting 7) and cut out with a large round cookie cutter.
• If you’re going old school and rolling out by hand, you have two options:
  1. Roll out sheets of dough as thin as you can and cut out with a cookie cutter to get uniform wrappers.
  2. Divide and roll the dough out into grape-sized balls and roll them out as thin as you can to get rustic wrappers.
• Dust each wrapper liberally with cornstarch before stacking to avoid them sticking together.

*Note: If you’re rolling by hand, you will most definitely get a lot less than 50 wrappers.