Dumpling--Dumpling wraps

A lot of parents struggle to get their kids to eat green vegetable. Chinese parents deal with the same problem too. Most Chinese parents' solution is, put them in the dumplings. I have seen kids being picky on what they would eat, but I haven't see any kids refuse dumpling. Especially when they help making them.

Dumpling making is always a family affair in my family. We always make dumplings on the day off. Everyone has to help. It starts with chopping all the vegetable and waiting for my mom to season the filling. Then everyone has to help on wrapping it. The best part is to enjoy the freshly made dumpling. We normally don't eat much. But we always eat double when we have dumplings.

Here we see so many kids wouldn't touch any vegetable. One professor claim that his son wouldn't touch anything green. But after we invited his family for dumpling making, his son not only asked to have more dumplings later, but also asked to make dumpling. I am not sure it is the dumpling making process make the kid feel more interested in eating it or because our dumpling is tasty. I would like to believe that's the first one. I truly believe that involve kids in the process of making food is the first step to get them to eat right. For the Chinese family it seems to start with dumpling making.

In Taiwan, or I should say at Taipei, you can easily find noodle store for fresh made noodle and dumpling wraps. People from northern China are more family with dough making. Unfortunately both side of my parents are native Taiwanese that dough making is never happen in my family. I didn't learn about how to work with dough until I was in high school taking cooking class. And only until I was frustrated with the frozen dumpling wraps that I try to figure out how to make nice dumpling wrap from scratch.

The problem with the frozen dumpling wraps is that you really need to defrozed it slowly. At the same time, there shouldn't be any moisture accumulate in the package, and that's practically impossible. On top of that, the frozen dumpling break up much easier and is not as easy to wrap. With some basic knowledge of Chinese dough making, it is not so difficult to make it your own.

There are two kind of Chinese dough. One made with cold water, one made with boiling-hot water. Dumpling wrap is the the cold water dough. The basic recipe is 3 parts of flour with 1 part of water, add a pinch of salt. And that's it. Unimaginably simple. Mix everything together, let it rest for 15 min. Then really knead it well for a while. The traditional dumpling wrap should be roll out one by one. The wrap should have thick center and thin outside. That way the fold of the dumpling won't have a big lump of dough. After trying this process for a while, we find that this involved way too much work. Especially I am not good with using the rolling pin. In order to make big quantity of dumpling fast with just the two of us, we decided to get a nice Italian pasta machine. Using the machine roll out beautiful, evenly thin dough. Then we can simply cut out the circle to use as dumpling wrap. And the cutter is just a clean can that was chosen for its size.

I have been interested in making the dumpling dough with whole wheat flour. As it turn out, whole wheat flour doesn't have enough gluten that the finished dumpling break easily during the boiling process. With all the experiment with making pizza, pasta, we have got a variety of flour in our pantry. So one day, I decide to try to use a mix of different flour to see how it would turn out. I mixed in whole wheat flour, durum flour, regular unbleached flour, and bread flour. I used 4+1/2 cup of flour, that means using one cup of everything and an extra half cup of whole wheat. The end result, the dumpling wraps are so tasty that we stick with this recipe from now on.

Dumpling wraps

whole wheat flour 1+1/2 cup
durum wheat flour 1 cup
all purpose flour 1 cup
bread flour 1 cup
salt 1/2 tsp
cold water 1+1/2 cup

1. Mix everything together. Form a ball. Let rest for 15 min.
2. Knead the dough as good as you can. Use some flour if it is too sticky.
3. Roll out think sheets with pasta machine. (7 in my machine setting.) Cut out the circle with a can.

Fresh dough should be used right away. If you want to stack them, dust some flour in between.