How to make Chinese chicken dumplings with ginger – an easy recipe to follow at home
- Minced chicken is usually breast meat, so make the best of it with other ingredients that give the dumplings an irresistible crunch
- This step-by-step guide to filling and folding the dumpling wrapper will have you making batches in no time
I have long wanted to develop a recipe for Chinese chicken dumplings, but it took several more attempts than expected. It would have been easier if minced dark meat were easily available, because it’s more similar to minced pork. Unfortunately, in most supermarkets, all you will find is minced chicken breast – not thigh or leg meat. Minced breast can have a cottony or pasty texture (the latter comes from being too finely minced), both of which are unpleasant.
To get around that, I added a lot of other ingredients to the minced chicken breast filling: ginger, fresh water chestnuts, spring onions and fresh coriander. They all add flavour, but just as importantly, they give the filling texture, especially the ginger and water chestnuts, which have a delicate crunch.
This amount of filling makes about 60 to 80 dumplings. You don’t need to boil all of them at once, because they freeze well. Put the uncooked dumplings on a tray, then into the freezer. When the dumplings are frozen solid, transfer them to a sealable plastic container or put them in a ziplock bag. Boil the dumplings from their frozen state.
Chicken and ginger dumplings
500 grams minced chicken breast
15ml light soy sauce
10ml rice wine or sake
5 grams granulated sugar
¾ tsp fine sea salt
½ tsp finely ground white pepper
10ml sesame oil
1½ tsp cornstarch
3 fresh water chestnuts
A 60-gram chunk of peeled ginger
80 grams spring onions
20 grams fresh coriander leaves and stalks
60-80 round dumpling wrappers (9cm in diameter)
For the dipping sauce:
Light soy sauce
Chinese or Japanese brown vinegar
Sesame oil
2-3 spring onions, thinly sliced
A few fresh coriander stalks, roughly chopped
Several thin slices of peeled ginger, finely julienned
3-4 red bird’s-eye chillies, thinly sliced
Chilli oil or chilli paste
1 Put the chicken breast in a mixing bowl and add the soy sauce, rice wine or sake, sugar, salt, pepper, sesame oil and cornstarch. Mix thoroughly, then refrigerate while preparing the other ingredients.
2 Use a paring knife to remove the tough skin from the water chestnuts. Rinse the chestnuts thoroughly, then thinly slice them before mincing.