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4 Levels of Dumplings: Amateur to Food Scientist

We challenged chefs of three different skill levels - amateur John, home cook Charlene, and professional chef King Phojanakong from the Institute of Culinary Education - to make a batch of dumplings. Once each chef had presented their creations, we asked food scientist Rose to explain their choices. Which one of these piquant potstickers are you sticking your fork in first?

Released on 06/23/2020


[fast-paced drum music]

Hi, I'm John and I'm a level one chef.

Hi, I'm Charlene and I'm a level two chef.

Hi, I'm King I'm an instructor at the

Institute Of Culinary Education.

And I have been a chef for over 20 years.

[fast paced drum music]

I have never made dumplings before.

I did tell my grandmother that I'm here,

I'm a little nervous

cause she will this video and judge me very harshly.

My grandma is a pretty good cook.

Dumplings were always there pretty much all of my childhood.

My first time making dumplings

was probably when I was like four or five.

There is really isn't a recipe,

this is from experimentation

and it really comes out a little bit different every time.

I have been making dumplings for a long time.

If it was a perfect world,

I would have sushi dumplings everyday.


But we are not in a perfect world.

[sharp drum music]

So today, supper excited to be making dumplings.

First thing we are going to do

is we are going to make our dumpling wrapper.

This is AP flour, all purpose flour.

Use bread flour and also this makes it harder

for the dough to break when you are boiling it.

So add a pinch of salt

and then I add this room temperature water.

Hot water in here.

The hot water is just kind of help

work that gluten in there,

get that dough kind of soft.

So I like to use my fingers like this

to fold the flour in to incorporate everything.

So I realized that also a stand mixer

might be easier for something like this.

You know, if you are going to make a large batch

of this you could use a mixer but I'm a chef

and I like to do things with my hands.

To make it really easy I bought this pre made dough.

It's essentially dumpling wrappers.

I guess I will continue.

And we are also going to add fat to this,

vegetable oil can give this dough some nice elasticity.

In order for it not to dry out

you put a towel over it.

Put our little dough ball to sleep.

I'm going to let our little dough ball rest for 45 minutes

covered with a dump towel.

So this is a dumpling wrapper,

it's essentially what you'd expect.

It's dough that flour based

that has been flattened, pressed

and then usually refrigerated.

Really easy to work with.

If you buy it frozen you could just let it defrost

before you are ready to work with them.

So now this has been sitting for about 15 minutes

and I'm ready to check on it.

Hello, it's loosened up a little bit now.

So it's easier for me to kneed

but you'll know your ready when

this surface of this dough is relatively smooth

like a baby's butt basically.

So know this sits for an a hour.

So in order for it not to dry,

I use a wet towel.

All right. So we've let our dough rest

for about 45 minutes of room temp.

I want to form into a large donut

and the goal here is just have

the even all around.

Sprinkle a little bit of flour.


Now we're going to cut our guy in half.

I'm going to leave this guy here on the side.

Right now we're looking pretty good.

In today's day and age,

when time is money I think it's perfect fine.

It's not too much work for me.

I really like to cook, so.

We're going to cut our log in half.

We're going to cut this in half again.

It's just a process of cutting

and then punching down

and then eventually rolling out.

We want it to be a lot thinner on the outside

and a little bit thicker right here in the middle.

So this is what the wrapper is going

to look like for a dumpling.

So I'm going to cover these with a wet paper towel

to keep them nice and moist

and next onto my filling.

So first up,

let me take care of these green onions

and then I'm going to just do a very fine chop.

Garlic. Okay. Just going to work this through.

I am going to play with some ginger.

I love ginger.

I just like using a spoon.

I find a little more gentler than using a peeler.

Just going to peel it.

We just Michael flame our ginger.

I'm just going to tap it, snowing ginger.

So the cabbage I'm using is

Napa cabbage. Napa cabbage.

It has a lot of like juice in it.

If that makes sense.

If your cabbage is really wet,

you can dry it out with a paper towel.

But for here, we're using salt to coax

the water out of this vegetable.

So now that it's in this bowl,

I add the salt,

give it a mix.

I just let it sit for 15 minutes.

And this is a great time

to assemble the rest of the filling.

I have some ground pork here.

You can use ground pork,

but I like to use [foreign language] pork.

The shrimp since the meat is also a minced,

you kind of want it to be in a similar consistency.

We're going to slice our chives, salt, sugar.

Another key ingredient is the

shiitake mushrooms, more oil.

[Chefs] Sesame oil.

Soy sauce.

If you are concerned about salt,

you can go low sodium I'm not.

Now we're going to mix everything together.

Our fillings done.

We're going to make our stock.

This is a nice pig's foot.

Say hi to pigs foot.

You could throw this in there,

but you're going to miss all that beautiful collagen

that's in the middle of this.

Collagen is really important

because as we cook that collagen out

it makes our stock gelatinous.

So you don't have to chop them up.

There we go.

That's what we want for a stock.

And then one egg,

but I'm going to beat the egg

before I put it in the mixture.

Cooking wine.

Chicken feet, these we don't have

to hack up, chicken back.

So now we're going to work with our aromatics

that goes into our stock.

Ginger, lets do our garlic,

whole black peppercorns and salt, water.

We're going to bring it up to a boil

and then we're going to lower it down to a simmer

and let it simmer for four hours.

And now I'm just gonna mix it all up.

Some people like to use their hands, I don't.

I'm mixing this with my hands.

This is something I do.

Some people think it's gross.

This is another arm workout.

Dumplings are just such a good soul food really.

So now what I do

is I squeeze excess liquid out of this Napa cabbage.

And I just mix until I incorporated.

Here's our stock I threw it in the fridge

a couple of hours.

And I mean,

you're talking about gelatinously,

that's stock's not going anywhere.

So we are just going to do a nice symbol cross hatch

just all the way across.

This is going to be the start of a beautiful soupy dumpling.

That's our gelatinize soup ready for our super dumplings.

It's so easy when much of the ingredients

chop them up, throw it in a bowl, mix it up.

Now I'm going to make our sauce for our dumplings.

Which is arguably kind of the most

important part of the flavor.

This is probably what grandma would make,

maybe a little dumbed down.

So I'm making kind of a citron style sauce.

This is where my family's from.

I'm Southerners traditional sauce for dumplings.

In the North you usually dip them in vinegar

and maybe a little bit of ginger.

Back to our ginger,

we're going to peel this,

we're going to Julian this.

We've got our chives, rice wine vinegar.

You are finally slice up one scallion.

The base of the sauce are these two things

which are homemade.

So this one,

this first one is this called [foreign language] which means

[Chefs] Sweet soy sauce.

I love how that comes together.

Look at that.

And we're going to mix.

And then this one is chili oil,

which is where all the spice comes from.

For the sauce,

it's just putting things together.


Chili oil,

Sesame oil, Sesame oil.

Vinegar, pepper corn oil,

sugar Sugar.

Cause it swings it up.

Add salt.

And then our scallions.

But I'm using two cloves here.

So I really like the flavor of garlic

and I think it balances well with some

of the sweeter soy sauce flavors here.

And just mix it all up

and then just a little taste.

I use my pinky. Hmm.

And that's it.

That's our sauce for our soup dumpling.

This is by far the most fun part.

Well, not the most fun part.

The eating is the most fun part.

This might be one of the most intimidating parts

of the process.

These are the beautiful balls we made earlier.

A little flour to start us off,

just basically pushed down on it.

So we have like a flat little pancake

and now we're going to roll out.

It's kind of like origami arts and crafts.

There's no one right or wrong way to do it.

Basically, every member of my family does it differently.

This is our filling we made earlier our pork filling.

I'm going to take some of this.

That's our a nice gelatinous broth.

And I'm going to fold it into our film.

I like to fill mine to the brim.

I like to be pretty aggressive with how much I put in.

Kind of want to under stuff you're dumpling.

You don't want to over stuff it.

You want to use your judgment.

You still want to have that perimeter outside.

And now here comes the fun part.

We're going to start folding it, pinching it.

It's like a nice little purse.

And then what we're going to do is just twist it at the end.

Make a pinch, make another pinch, make another pinch.

Start from the other side

and then make the pitches to go towards the middle again.

And then seal the middle together.

And because this is like homemade dough.

I don't need water to seal anything.

I'm going to moisten the edges of the wrapper

with some water.

Going to cramp the middle

and then work through

to seal the edges.

The biggest thing is you just want it to close.

Chinese culture good luck is a eight or 18.

So they say at least 18 crimps.

I never really follow that rule though.

Look, you can just,

just lay on that like a pillow,

like that's adorable.

And now you have a nice little dumpling.

Now we're going to cook our dumpling.

So we have a wok here with water, a steam basket.

We want to line that bamboo though.

You don't want to put it straight on the bamboo

because if we put that straight on the bamboo

that dough as we steam it will get sticky.

So I decided to boil mine.

This is the most traditional way in my family to do it.

My opinion, you have like a more of a pure dumpling flavor

instead of searing it you get-

Oil about a tablespoon.

I'm looking for a nice good sizzle

when I dropped these bad boys in.

We are not there yet.

So we have our bamboo basket line

and I'm going to fill it with our dumplings.

And I don't want to overcrowd the pan.

And once this water starts boiling again,

I'll add a little bit to this water

to bring the temperature down.

The reason why I do that,

is because then outside layer the feeling

it doesn't over cook before the inside cooks.

Lets take a little peek.

Oh, yep these bottoms are getting nice and golden brown.

We have raw pork here.

We want to make sure that gets cooked fully through.

I like to leave it in there between eight,

like eight to 10 minutes,

kind of like a moist mini oven, natural oven.

We're just gonna add in a quarter cup of water.

Turn down the flame, cover.

And I'm just going to let these steam,

really about three to five minutes.

Steaming in the bamboo basket,

imparts that flavor of the bamboo

It's steaming, the meat's cooking.

Everything's looking right, you know,

knock a wood,

but I think I knock this one out of the park.

Since they're fresh,

they're not frozen.

They are ready really fast.

Dumplings are ready.

It's now to plate this.

So here I have my dumplings.

I have some scallions, some cilantro

and also my previously made dumpling sauce.

Wow. They're really sticking to the bottom here.

No wonder they're called blood stickers.

There we go.

Even after so many years,

chopsticks are still sometimes a struggle.

So, you know, got a little beat up, oops.

Dipping sauce, Oh my God,

it's so pretty.

I'm feeling great

cause now it's time for the best part.

And here are my dumplings.

And here are my minced pork and shrimp

and Napa cabbage dumplings.

And these are my soupy dumplings.

This is the fun part.

This is what we've all been waiting for at least as well.

This is what I've been waiting for.

Now, we get to eat it.

All right here it goes.

I actually like that.


Yeah, it's pretty good.

That's a soupy dumpling.

They taste like I remember,

it tastes like my childhood.

It tastes like home.

I would definitely serve this to my grandma.

I think she'd be very proud.

My favorite part of this dumpling

is knowing how many hours I put into it.


It's all worth it at the very end.

Now that I'm in New York whenever I miss home,

I like to make this.

It came out really nice, nothing exploded.

All the pockets held up tight.

The pork has the right amount of fat.

The sauce is great.

It's great. It's a winner.

Dumplings are delicious package

of expertly, balanced, salty, sweet and acidic flavors.

Let's see how each of our chefs made theirs.

[fast paced drum music]

John used a store bought wonton wrapper

that was already shaped and size to accommodate his filling.

These rappers are versatile, convenient

and made essentially with flour and water.

They do have some additional ingredients

that act as preservatives

like sodium procreate and sodium benzoate

along with salt and citric acid.

They may also contain L-cystine,

which is an essential amino acid

that's required for gluten formation

and acts as a dough conditioner.

Which is one of the structural components

in dumpling wrappers.

They also helped make the dough pliable

and really easy to work with.

When time is money I think it's perfectly fine.

Charlene made her own dumpling skin

by blending bread flour,

which has a higher percentage of gluten proteins glutenin

and gliadin with just under 50% water by weight,

and a pinch of salt.

It's not too much work for me.

I really like to cook, so.

This flour to water ratio,

ensures that the gluten proteins will be completely hydrated

and pliable enough to fill in crimp.

Charlene also took time to rest her dough,

which allows for complete starch and protein hydration

and for the proteins to relax.

Making the dough nice and supple.

King made his dumplings skins out of a lower protein,

all purpose flour.

As the name indicated,

all purpose flour is milled

and processed with a broad range of functionality in mind.

He had a lower flour to water ratio,

but used hot water,

which caused the starch molecules to begin to gelatinize.

Which is what we want.

The addition of a small amount of oil adds richness,

but also coats the flour preventing complete starched

gelatinization and yielding a very tender

slightly glossy dough.

[fast paced drum music]

John's filling is simple, clean

and expresses traditional Asian flavors.

By blending garlic, ginger, scallions, soy sauce

and Sesame oil with ground pork and Napa cabbage.

Napa cabbage is a cruciferous vegetable

that has an oblong shape

with tightly packed slightly bumpy leaves.

It has a mild flavor.

You can always use Chinese cabbage.

The way cabbage is prepared

has an effect on the taste.

John chopped his Napa cabbage,

which has been found to liberate flavor compounds

like the Isothiocyanates from their precursor molecules,

increasing the prominence of nice cabbage flavor.

Charlene used a shrimp and pork combination

along with re hydrated shiitake mushrooms,

which add an earthy, woody, meaty flavor

from the glutamic acid present.

She also added-

[Chefs] Sesame oil.

Which has a distinctive nutty flavor.

Charlene salted her Napa cabbage,

which draws out much of the water through osmosis.

This removes water from the mixture,

too much water dilutes flavors.

And it creates excess steam

and makes for a very soggy filling.

King made a pork filling from shoulder meat.

It's slightly darker than the pork loin

because it's almost twice as high in iron content.

He also added garlic and ginger.

Play with some ginger.

I love ginger.

Cooked together, garlic and ginger have a wonderful aroma.

[fast paced drum music]

John made a sauce that enhances his filling

with familiar Asian flavors.

It's a blend of flavorful liquids

in which the sugar will dissolve

balancing the salty acidic and umami notes.

This is probably what grandma would make.

Maybe a little dumb down.

Charlene increased the complexity of her sauce

with the addition of sweet soy sauce.

It's called [foreign language] which means

[Chefs] Sweet soy sauce.

Which is usually slightly more viscous, darker

and sweeter than regular soy sauce

because it has fermented palm rock sugar added.

She also included black vinegar.

Most commercially processed vinegars

are standardized at 5% acidic acid.

Some wine vinegars have a slightly higher percentage.

Black Chinese vinegars may only have 2% acidic acid.

So it's not nearly as tart as vinegar

you may have in your cupboard.

She contrasted chili oil,

which gets its heat from capsaicin ids

in the chili infused oil.

On the other hand,

the peppercorn oil gets its heat

from hydroxyl-alpha-sanshool,

which is associated with szechuan peppers

from which the peppercorn oil is made.

Szechuan peppers are spicy, fruity, citrusy

and slightly numbing.

King kept his sauce simple

because he made a gelatinous soup as an ingredient

for his dumplings.

His sauce is soy rice vinegar,

which is less acidic and has some sweetness to it.

Ginger and sliced chives for a slight grassy green note,

which adds some color to his dark sauce.

King soup includes chicken feed

and backs and pigs feet.

They're high in insoluble protein collagen

as it's heated collagen is hydrolyzed

and transforms into the soft water-soluble protein gelatin.

Which takes the form of a solid one when it's cooled.

It adds viscosity and a thicker mouth feel

to a super sauce.

[fast paced drum music]

All three of our chefs assembled their dumplings

into round dumpling skins

and stuffed them with uncooked filling.

John sealed his dumplings with water

stressing the importance of a good seal.

The biggest thing is you just want it to close.

Charlene used a rolling cut

to make the dough mass into individual dumpling disks.

She added a dusting of flour prior to filling

to act as a thickening agent

for any excessive moisture in the filling.

King used a small thin rolling pin

to make his discs.

Just rolling away.

He added some of the filling

along with the gelatinous soup

and pleaded and pinched the edges closed.

Pleading the edges not only makes for a beautiful dumpling,

but it's functional as well

because it's an excellent way to seal the edges.

It's like a nice little purse.

[fats paced drum music]

All three chefs used different cooking methods

for their dumplings.

John sauteed the bottom of his dumplings to add color

and a crunchy texture.

He then adds water

and covers his pan causing his dumplings to steam.

Charlene simmered her dumplings in water

just below the boiling point.


Boiling happens at 212 degrees Fahrenheit.

Each time the water boiled,

Charlene added a small amount of cold water,

which kept the temperature consistently just follow boiling.

By reducing the boiling action.

The water's less turbulent and thereby

less likely to cause the dumplings to burst open.

King used a traditional bamboo steamer.

Bamboo steamers are interlocking flat baskets

that are stackable with a cover on top.

This is a gentle way to cook the dumplings,

minimizing the potential for them to burst.

Steaming in the bamboo basket

imparts that flavor of the bamboo.

King lined his steamer with Napa cabbage leaves

that turn a bright beautiful green color

when they're initially heated.

The green pigment called chlorophyll in the cabbage,

loses molecular water and expresses the green color

very clearly and brightly.

It's a beautiful way to serve these tender

and delicious dumplings.

Found in many worlds cuisines

dumplings may be prepared using a wide variety of methods,

such as sauteing, simmering or steaming.

We hope you'll take inspiration from our chefs.

The next time you want to dip into dumplings.

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