"You don't have to cook fancy or complicated masterpieces-just good food from fresh ingredients" Julia Child
If you’re like us, then you know the weekends are meant for R&R. This past week, we decided to celebrate our Saturday night by cooking vegan dumplings, almost from scratch !
Whether alone or surrounded by loved ones, there’s a satisfaction that emanates from chopping, grilling and simmering. The joy in using your own hands to curate a meal from scratch and nourish your human vessel with goodness can be a spiritual experience (insert chef’s kiss)!
In our BEDI Studios community, we consider dumplings a high ranker in our top ten comfort foods. With the help of family, friends and music, we created our own delicious take on a traditional recipe. Hope you enjoy the results just as much as we did!
This is our third time making vegan dumplings. The first time we made our own dumpling wrappers which, (in our opinion), is way harder than it may seem. Making the wrapper is quite simple, as the sole ingredients consist of flour and water. However, the tricky part occurs when it’s time to roll out the dough to a perfectly thin consistency. When it came to cooking the dumplings, the dough was too thick and chewy and unfortunately, didn’t taste all that great. The second time, we bought wonton wrappers in the shape of a circle, which are available at your local Asian supermarket. Third time’s a charm!!
We followed the recipe from The Woks of Life, with a couple of our own modifications.
https://thewoksoflife.com/vegetable-dumplings/
We started by chopping up all of the ingredients for the filling. Once chopped, we stir fried the onions, ginger, mushrooms, cabbage and carrots. A member of our cooking clan, who is a die-hard ginger fan, decided to chop up some more ginger for a bit more of a zing. We also added some extra carrots and peanuts inside our filling for an extra crunch. Once cooked, we transferred the filling to a separate bowl, in which we added the soya sauce, sugar, sesame oil, and the rest of the ingredients. As we didn’t have Shaoxing wine, we used rice vinegar as a substitute.
As we completed the filling, the fun part finally arrived, the assembling of the dumpling! We like to dip each wonton in warm water, making it easier to create the perfect shape. Multiple shapes later, we agreed to create dumplings in the form of ravioli roses, if one could describe it that way :-)
We lined up our dumplings on a baking sheet and were super excited, as the time to eat them was quickly approaching. There are multiple different ways one could cook these delicious treats. The method we prefer is simply putting the dumplings in a pot of boiling water. Once the dumplings rise, they are ready to eat. (You can also pan fry them for extra crispiness).
For the dressing, we made a peanut butter sauce, using the recipe below:
https://www.ricardocuisine.com/en/recipes/3794-pork-dumplings-with-peanut-sauce
We garnished our dumplings with peanut butter sauce and parsley. They tasted incredible!
This was a fantastic evening and we’re so glad we got to share this experience with our fellow dumpling lovers. Let us know if you create your own, we always love hearing from our community!
Below is our modified version of the recipe from The Woks of Life to yield around 40 dumplings:
Two packs of dumpling wrappers3 tablespoons oil of your choice
2.5 tablespoons of ginger
1 large white onion
2.5 cups of cremini mushrooms
1.5 cups of cabbage
2 cups of carrots
2 tablespoons of dried chives
2 teaspoons sesame oil
3 tablespoons rice vinegar
2.5 tablespoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon sugar
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