Homemade String Beans dumplings. Hands down, my favorite ever since I was a kid. I can eat like a million of these… not literally a million, but close.
Because it’s a bit complicated to make, this is a step-by-step photo tutorial for these delicious babies!
Ingredients:
1 lb ground pork
1lb string beans
1.5 cup scallion, chopped
1 tbs ginger, minced
2 tbs soy sauce
3 tbs sesame oil
salt
*Recipe makes about 60 dumplings
Directions:
1. Chop the ground pork (to make the meat softer), then add scallions and ginger in a bowl.
2. With chopsticks, beat the meat (in circles) while adding 1/4 cups of water at a time. This step is to make the meat more fluffy and tender when cooked. In this recipe, I added 1/4 cups of water about four times over a period of 8 minutes. You can stop when the meat turns “sticky”. This is kind of the annoying step, you use a lot of arm strength. But it’s a work out.
3. Put the meat mixture aside. Wash string beans, make sure the tips from both ends are chopped or ripped.
4. In boiled water with some salt, slightly steam the string beans for 3 minutes. The string beans will magically turn slightly greener at this point. The purpose of boiling them is so they are a little cooked so they won’t feel too crunchy as filling.
5. Run cold water over the slightly-steamed string beans. 30 seconds so they stop cooking.
5. Finely chop the string beans. Make sure you chop them as small as you can. Some people like to use a blender to do this job, but I am afraid they would be too little and wet, then there won’t be a good texture when you bite into the dumpling. A food processor can be a good tool for this step, but I don’t have one here, so my hands will do.
6. Using a cloth strainer (in Asia, this is commonly used to make soy products, but in the West you can find cloth coffee strainers) and squeeze out juice from the string beans. Leave some moisture in the string beans though, so the dumplings won’t be too dry.
7. Add string beans, soy sauce, sesame oil, and a small dash of salt into the meat mixture, mix, then pop it in the fridge for at least 20 minutes, and you have finished the filling!
8. Prepare dumpling wrapper. This is fresh, handmade wrappers from the traditional market. It’s often difficult to find fresh ones outside of Asia, but frozen, refrigerated wrappers will do as well.
9. Prepare a cup of water (used as glue for the dumpling wrappers), and large plates/sheets with sprinkled flour.
10. Take out the mixture from the fridge, and let’s begin to fold the dumplings! Here are the steps:
Put about a tablespoon of the filling in the middle of the wrapper
Dip finger in water, and wet the rim for half of the circle
close the middle
use both hands to cup the dumpling between thumb and index finger
and sqeeeeze. tight. make sure there is no room for any filling to come out when cooking it.
soon enough, plates of dumplings are born!
11. Almost done. Now we just gotta cook the dumplings. Boil a large pot of water, in medium heat, add the dumplings. Make sure you don’t overcrowd the pot. We have about 25 dumplings in this large pot.
make sure to use the back of the spoon, pushing forward when stirring the pot so you don’t break any of these babies.
12. When the water boils and it looks like the bubbles are going to spill out of the pot, add in a large cup of cold water and keep stirring. When the water is boiling again and bubbles are coming out, add in another cup of cold water. When the water boils for the third time, your dumplings should be fully cooked.
*If and when cooking frozen dumplings, you need add water three times instead of twice. The point is so the dumplings are completely cooked.
13. When the “butt” of the dumplings are up, that means they are cooked!
see their large butts? hehe
14. Scoop them out with a hand strainer, carefully though, so they don’t break.
Ta da!
15. Prepare your favorite sauce. Most people’s variations include soy sauce, chinese Worcestershire sauce, sesame oil, chili sauce. I like mine with just Worcestershire and sesame oil.
16. Take a bite, and let’s take a look at the yummy filling
Ah… sooo yummy. Light but filling. Did I already say this is my favorite dish?
I’ll admit, it can be a little complicated and this is definitely not a 30-minute meal. But, with a little patience and (possibly) a few tries, this dish is rewarding and fun to make! Take a challenge, I dare you!
If you have any questions with this recipe, please feel free to ask me, I will try my hardest to help you perfect your dumpling experience!
i really like the way you broke down the steps with all the pictures!
also sue’s hands look amazing in the picture of her squeezing out the string beans. i can’t stop looking at them!
haha, yeah it’s such a process to make but so worth it because it’s so freaking good.
i really miss making dumplings with my mom – we never used string beans!!!
aww yeah, it’s such a good bonding activity! String beans is kind of our family recipe, the dumplings taste different than the regular chives or cabbage ones. They are more light, just the way i like them!