And also handy Dumpling #protip things. (Yes, I know your aunties told you the One Right Way to make dumpling wrappers. You should always agree with your aunties and do it this way when they’re not looking)

Dumping wrappers are a wheat dough, so that means treat it as such and measure things by weight. I find a 52% dough (so use however much flour you want and add 52% of its weight in water) works nicely.

Add 2% salt. Yes, your aunties will be horrified so don’t tell them, and they’ll either be impressed with your wrappers when they eat them, or annoyed that yours are better than theirs. (Unless your aunties are sensible and add salt. Which does happen sometimes) A small amount of salt won’t be identifiable but it makes a huge difference.

If you’re going to mostly pan-fry your dumplings, add 3-4% sugar by weight. Again, like the salt, you won’t notice the sugar but it’ll get you nice golden brown fried dumplings. (I don’t bother for dumplings we’re mostly just boiling)

Make your dough ahead of time. Letting the dough hydrate and autolyse for an hour or two makes a big difference in the flavor of the dumplings and the workability of the dough. Definitely nicer when you’re making a huge batch of dumplings to freeze for later. (They’re so much better than the crappy store-bought bagged frozen dumplings)

Also I gotta give a shout out to my food processor here. The store was out of ground pork when we went shopping (because, well… lunar new year) so we got a chunk of pork shoulder instead and made the ground pork ourselves. JFC it was so much better than the pre-ground stuff — we got to control the fat level, the grind so it wasn’t just paste, and the quality of the meat we chose. Plus, bonus, it was actually cheaper per pound than the pre-ground stuff, only costing us a bit of time. We have the time to spend, so 10/10 will absolutely do this again and screw the pre-ground meats.

If you want to do it yourself it’s trivial. Get a nice solid food processor (people like to dump cuisinart ones at charity shops and tag sales, you can probably find something cheap), cut your meat into 1 inch/2cm cubes, toss ’em on a sheet pan into the freezer for 10m or so to firm up, then into the food processor and pulse (pulse! Not whiz, you get paste if you whiz) until you get the grind level you like. Nice. And as a double-bonus, a full pork shoulder is safe in the fridge for quite a few days where ground meat gets dodgy after two or three, so you can shop ahead more and make the stuff when you need.