Vegetable Dumplings that will make you question your loyalty to pork dumplings!

I was once a vegetable dumpling skeptic, but I was converted. Hi everyone, it's Sarah from the Walks of Life, and today we are making vegetable dumplings. Now, I used to be skeptical of the vegetable dumpling, and that all changed one day in college when I went with some friends to a dumpling restaurant. My friend ordered vegetable dumplings, and I was kind of like, okay, I guess. Why would you do that? I just thought vegetable dumplings were bad, and that they could not possibly be as good as a pork-filled dumpling or a pork-based filling, which is what we grew up with. I tried one of those veggie dumplings, and it was shocking, like how much flavor there was in it and how tasty it was. And this recipe is based on trying to recreate those dumplings that we had then. We have here regular yellow onions. We have cabbage. Taiwanese cabbage is ideal, but any green or Savoy cabbage works. I have carrots, shiitake mushrooms. These are fresh shiitake mushrooms. These are much cheaper at your local Asian grocery store. So this package costs about five bucks, which if you walked into any like Whole Foods or specialty store that also happens to be selling shiitake mushrooms, you're gonna pay way more. Garlic chives. These just came out of our garden. These pack a lot of flavor. And then we have store-bought dumpling wrappers, which our original recipe actually uses a homemade dumpling wrapper, but today for convenience, I am going to use the store-bought. And finally, we have a little piece of ginger here. We need about a tablespoon minced. And then seasoning-wise, we have Shaoxing wine, light soy sauce, some sesame oil, and white pepper. The beauty of this recipe is that everything needs to be sort of grated or finely chopped, and we are going to do all of that with the food processor. So right now I have the grater attachment on here, and I'm gonna use that for the cabbage and the carrots. We need one and a half cups of cabbage. This recipe makes about five dozen dumplings. So you should have plenty for like a meal and then to put in the freezer. I'm just gonna cut the cabbage so that it can fit into the food processor. And I'm gonna sort of put it in long ways so that the grates that I get aren't these like little short bits. It's just like magic. So now I'm gonna do my carrots and I'm gonna do the same thing where I put it in sort of sideways like that. The thing about vegetable dumplings is that you can have like what I call a green dumpling or you can have a vegetable dumpling like this, where you have a mixture of lots of different vegetables. And that was what I had at that restaurant originally where they had some cabbage, there was carrots, there was mushrooms in it. You're getting umami from the mushrooms. You got sweetness from the carrots and cabbage, a little bit of this sort of like garlicky chiviness, which just adds a ton of flavor. And you have the sweetness of the cooked onion as well. We are working on a beefy green based dumpling as well, which is kind of a different ball game in terms of how you have to flavor it. That recipe is still in testing phase. Here we go. This is why it's like our recipes are a guide and you can absolutely adjust them a little bit if you want. But you know, you just have to keep in mind that you're gonna have to adjust the seasoning if you add more ingredients, right? You just have to add more seasoning to taste. So I know I'm gonna get a question about coleslaw mix. This sure looks like coleslaw mix. The thing about coleslaw mix is that sometimes you end up with bigger pieces than I think you want. But if you have a food processor, I think this is easier and better. I think it's a bad idea because coleslaw mix is often dry. Yeah, so now I'm switching from the grater attachment to the regular food processor blade attachment. So we call for one large onion. I have two mediums here. So I'm just gonna peel and then cut into large pieces and then I'll put them in the food processor. And I'm going to pulse them because I wanna be careful not to over chop, okay? This is nice, you know? It's like once you have the food processor out, just do everything in the food processor. You're making this washing situation worth it. So we need two cups of chopped mushrooms now. I do give them a rinse. I know people have a thing about not putting mushrooms underwater because it makes them waterlogged or whatever, but it doesn't make a big difference. It really doesn't. The water's gonna cook out anyway. Some of these, the stems are a little tough, so I just trim the ends off. And like the onion, I'm going to quarter them. These mushrooms are guacu or flower mushrooms. You can see they have this sort of cracked top. It's like a meatier mushroom. Once again, pulse. Great. With the chives, they are quite delicate. I just washed them, rinsed them underwater, and now I'm going to chop them pretty finely. Just make sure that when you're cutting chives that you're cutting all the way through. They don't have a lot of water content, so you don't have to cook them. So now I need about a tablespoon of minced ginger, and this is the organic ginger that we have at our Chinese market. So it's actually more pungent than the non-organic, and it's smaller. If you don't feel confident mincing this ginger, you can also grate it. All right, we're adding about three tablespoons of oil here, and we are going to start by cooking the ginger for 30 seconds or so. Now we can add our onion. So I'm cooking all of this in a really big wok, and it's actually going to be able to fit all of my vegetables. If you don't have a wok, you can use any old frying pan, and you can actually cook each of these elements in separate batches. You don't have to cook them all together at once. Or you could use a Dutch oven. Or you could use a Dutch oven, but even then, I would still cook it in batches because your surface area isn't going to be as big as you would have with a wok. So the onions are starting to look translucent, and now we're ready to add the mushrooms. Starts to look dry. You could add some more oil. So you just keep the mushrooms spread out like this. The goal is not to caramelize here. The goal is just to cook off the water content in the vegetables. But if it caramelizes a little bit, it's not a big deal. So now I'm going to add the cabbage and the carrots, and we're going to cook it for another few minutes. So this is looking done. Everything's wilted down, and a lot of that liquid has cooked off, and now we can scoop it out. So I let this filling cool for a bit, and now I'm going to add the garlic chives, and I'm going to start adding my seasoning. So I have Shaoxing wine here. The recipe calls for three tablespoons, but I'm going to add a little extra because we have a little extra vegetable in here. I need Chinese light soy sauce, or whatever regular soy sauce you have is fine, as long as it's naturally brewed. Again, I'm going to add a little extra, and I'm going to add sesame oil, and white pepper, and sugar. And the last ingredient is a bit more oil. You know, I've gotten flack on this before on this recipe where people are like, that's so much oil. It was four tablespoons. It was a quarter cup, but it really makes a difference to the filling. It helps it hold together. It coats all of the vegetables. It keeps them really moist. It makes them kind of juicy and succulent. If we had just dumped a bunch of raw vegetables in here, it would just be going all over the place. And then you would end up with like a deflated dumpling after cooking. All right, the filling is done. Let's make the dumpling. So to fill these dumplings, I have my store-bought dumpling wrappers here. Dumpling wrappers are round. The square ones are for wontons. Just remember that. And you want a relatively thin dumpling wrapper. So if it specifies a Shanghai style dumpling wrapper, that's the type that you want. So the first thing that you do is you put some water around the perimeter of the dumpling wrapper. The thing to remember here is not to get any grease from the filling in this outer edge, because if you are trying to seal the dumpling and you have grease, it's just gonna slip and slide and not close. I would start with a smaller amount just to practice. So I put about a tablespoon in the center of the wrapper. You just pinch the top, and then on one side, pleat inward towards the middle, and then seal the sides on the other side. Do exactly the same thing. And then you just press together until it's sealed. And that is a nice dumpling that is an easy pleat. If you're first starting with dumpling making, you don't have to do like a million pleats. I'm gonna put parchment paper on this baking sheet, and then I'm going to start lining these dumplings up on there. So once you're feeling comfortable with that two-pleat method, to make your dumplings just a little bit prettier, all you have to do is add one extra pleat on either side. So again, we pinch in the middle, and then you do one, two on one side, and then one, two on the other. And you get like a slightly more professional-looking dumpling. It's pretty easy. If you want more detail on how to wrap dumplings, we have a really detailed post, How to Fold Dumplings Four Ways, and we will link that in the description box below. Now is the time, if you have anybody else in the house who wants to make dumplings, to bring them into the kitchen and have them help you, because it could take like an hour to wrap all of these. If you are multiple people, it could take significantly faster than that. When these dumplings are assembled, these can really only sit out on the tray for an hour, maybe two tops. If you're not going to use them right away, hover this tray and then put it directly into the freezer. Right after they're frozen solid, you can move them off the tray and into a Ziploc bag. They'll store that way for three or four months at best quality. The flavor is definitely more ideal if you eat them within the first few months. So to pan fry your dumplings, heat your pan thoroughly before adding a thin layer of oil to the pan, and then place your dumplings in slightly apart so that they don't stick together. Let them get a nice light golden brown crust on the bottom. And then we're going to pour some water in, immediately cover them and let them steam. Most of the liquid has cooked off here. I think we could just turn up the heat a little bit to let it totally dry out. You can see that the wrapper is translucent, so it's cooked. Just want to loosen them. Ooh, perfect. That's nice. I'm going to take these out. All right, so let's taste these vegetable dumplings. Pan fried and crispy. So I made my dumpling sauce, which we will link in the description box below. We have a video for it as well as a recipe. Look at that. Dumpling perfection. Mm, crispy. Yeah, it sounds tasty. Really hot. Dumplings are like pizza. You got to be a little careful when they first come out. Here's the filling. It's moist, pretty cohesive. Still hot. I just think it's the perfect vegetable dumpling because it is really balanced and has so much flavor considering that this is a vegan dumpling. I didn't even put oyster sauce in this, but it just has so, so much flavor. Just as satisfying as a meat-filled dumpling, which is crazy. Thank you, Restaurant in Wappingers Falls, for proving me wrong. I've made these vegetable dumplings a lot since I first posted this recipe. A lot of other people have tried this too, and I've had multiple people tell me it's the best vegetable dumpling they've ever had. Other people were also vegetable dumpling skeptics like me and had their minds changed by this recipe, and I hope that if you're skeptical, your mind has changed as well, or if you're a vegan or a vegetarian, that you make this your new go-to vegetable dumpling. So if you enjoyed this video, please give it a like and subscribe to our YouTube channel and check out thewalksoflife.com for more recipes. Action. There's gonna come a point where I can't do this anymore. Action. Standing here, my back is hurting. Okay.