LSA News

No. 60, December 2004

Kaiping's Guotie (Pot-Stickers)

from notes taken by Rebecca Fisher and Harriett Smith

Dough:
Ingredients:

4 cups of flour
water as needed

Mix flour and a little water, stir with a fork. Add water until dough begins to stick together. Knead dough on floured surface. Dough should be not too soft and not too hard, so add additional flour or water as needed. Form into a ball, and pat with water, cover and let rest for at least 1 hour. If making dough the day before, refrigerate and then let it come back to room temperature before you use it.

To make the pot-sticker wrappers, on a floured surface shape the dough, making it oblong, and cut length-wise in quarters (or thirds, depending on how big you want your pot-stickers to be). Roll each quarter of dough into a long roll. Cut crosswise into small pieces and press flat into rounds, then roll out to thin rounds.

	Rose Thomas rolls out the dough.

Fillings:

For a vegetarian filling:
(you can really use most anything except potatoes)

6 eggs, scrambled
bean-thread noodles (glass noodles) boiled until soft, strained, and chopped
carrots, grated or very finely chopped
ginger, finely chopped or grated
scallions, finely chopped
shitake mushrooms, chopped finely
cabbage
   (Napa cabbage, bok choy, regular cabbage, or even spinach can be used with success, but if using cabbage, add salt to the leaves, let sit for a while, then rinse, drain, and squeeze out the extra water before chopping finely)

Chop vegetables finely either by hand or in a food processor. Mix ingredients together. Then add the following:

¼ cup soy sauce (or more if you like them to be saltier)
½ tsp sugar
¼ cup sesame oil

Stir all ingredients together well.

	Lei Yu shows Colleen Bell how to shape the pot-sticker.

For a meat filling:

1 lb ground pork
   (also works with ground beef, turkey, or chicken, but pork is especially nice). Add a little water to the meat and stir well (if water isn't added to the meat the pot-stickers will be dry).
1 bunch celery (mince, add salt and squeeze out extra water)
finely chopped green onions
grated or finely chopped ginger

Mix these ingredients together. Then add the following:

¼ cup soy sauce (or more if you like them to be saltier)
½ tsp sugar
¼ cup sesame oil

Dipping sauce

3 cloves garlic, minced
about ¼ cup Chinese vinegar (rice vinegar, red wine vinegar, or plum vinegar, or any flavoured vinegar you like will work)
a little soy sauce (maybe 2 T)
a little sesame oil (about a T or less)
Chili garlic sauce if desired (1-2 tsp or to taste)
about ¼ cup chopped cilantro

Mix ingredients together.

Assemble pot-stickers by putting a small amount of stuffing in the center of a wrapper. Holding the wrapper in your hand, add the stuffing slightly off-center so it's a bit more towards the "bottom" of your hand. Fold the wrapper in half. Pinch closed starting in the middle and then doing each side. Squeeze edges together, using both hands; hold pot sticker between your index fingers and thumbs, press fingers and thumbs together tightly without putting pressure on the filled part of the pot-sticker.

Fry pot-stickers in canola oil at 325 degrees in an electric fry pan. (Other types of oil such as peanut or olive can also be used; the taste will be slightly affected, especially with peanut oil.) Cover for a few seconds until the liquid in the frying pan is bubbling lightly. Turn temperature up to 350 degrees. Add ½ cup of water with a little vinegar (a tablespoon or so) in it (the vinegar is to make the bottoms of the pot-stickers crispy). More water can be added if needed. Cover again, and cook for a total of 10-15 minutes. Meat-filled pot-stickers will need to cook longer than the vegetarian pot-stickers.

The pot-stickers are done when the wrappers bounce back after being touch with a spatula.

Kaiping used the following brands:

Lee Kum Kee Premium Soy Sauce
Lee Kum Kee Chili Garlic Sauce
Chinkiang Vinegar
Kadoya Pure Sesame Oil

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