Well today I gathered some of my good friends and set them to work. I made over 200 mandoo today and now I have a freezer full of delicious Korean dumplings.
Stuffed dumplings are labour intensive. You need to squeeze out all the water from the tofu, bean sprouts and then chop all the vegetables, mix all the ingredients and season the stuffing and then finally stuff them into dough wrappers. Overall with about four to five friends you can stuff over 200 mandoo in about 2.5 hours (yikes). Of course there was a lot of eating involved too (you need to do some taste testing to make sure the stuffing is seasoned well).
If anyone wants to try to make Korean meat dumplings here is a basic recipe I like to use.
(Just for the record, I never write out recipes. For one thing, I don’t measure. All of this is purely guess).
Good luck!
Mandoo (100 dumplings)
1lb of ground beef or pork or both
1 medium onion (yellow or white) chopped fine
3-4 scallions chopped fine
1-2 tbl sp finely chopped ginger
3-5 cloves of chopped garlic
1 package of firm tofu
2 cups of mung bean sprouts
2-3 tsp of toasted sesame oil
1 tsp of white pepper
1 tsp of black pepper
2 egg
salt to taste
100 dumpling wrappers (you can buy this at a Korean grocery store or possibly an Asian grocery market)
-boil water and cook mung bean sprouts for about 2 minutes and then strain them and rinse them in cold water
-squeeze as much water out of the bean sprouts with your hands
-chop up the bean sprouts and put into a large mixing bowl
-drain the tofu from the package and then use some paper towels and soak up the water. Squeeze as much water out of the tofu (don’t worry about it crumbling you want that to happen) add it to the bean sprouts
-add sesame oil, white and black pepper, salt, onions, garlic, scallions, 1 egg and meat into bowl then mix thoroughly.
-in a separate bowl crack and whip an egg
-take a dumpling wrapper and using your finger, rub egg on the edge of half the wrapper (like the letter C), put in about a small spoonful of filling in the center of the wrapper. Fold the wrapper in half and squeeze the sides closed.
-sprinkle some flour on the dumpling so that they don’t stick to each other.
-boil water and drop in the mandoo and let it cook for about 5 minutes. Then heat up some oil in a frying pan and pan fry the cooked mandoo (this part is optional)
-you can make an easy dipping sauce by using soy sauce, vinegar and a little bit of sugar.
Enjoy!
Yooni…..
I have talked about these since our days in Kingston. Now I can try to make them for myself! Thanks for the recipe!
Heidi