This recipe can be used to make three different types of dumpling dough. For boiled dumplings, use cold water. For steamed dumplings, use hot water. For steam-fried dumplings (potstickers), split the recipe into halves, and make cold and hot water doughs, then combine them at the end. This is a simple 50% hydration dough. You can scale it up or down depending on how many dumpling wrappers you think you need. As written, this makes approximately 3 dozen dumpling wrappers (~15g each).
Active Time: 3-5 minutes
Total Time: 45 minutes
Ingredients
- 3 cups All purpose flour | 12¾ oz | 360g
- ¾ cup water (6 fluid oz) | 6.3 oz | 180g
Instructions
Cold water dough (boiled dumplings):
- Measure flour into a large wide bowl.
- Using chopsticks, mix water into the flour until the water is absorbed and most of the loose flour is gone. The dough not be a cohesive ball, but lots of small clumps.
- Using your hand, form a ball of dough, and knead it for 30 seconds. Long enough to collect all of the small clumps into a cohesive ball. It will be stiff.
- Cover the dough to keep it from drying, and allow it to rest for 20 minutes. Then knead it for about 30 seconds. You should find the dough is softer now, and much smoother.
- Cover again, and rest for another 20 minutes. Then knead it one final time for another 30 seconds.
- The dough should be ready to be portioned and rolled into wrappers.
Hot water dough (steamed dumplings):
- Measure flour into a large wide bowl.
- Boil a cup of water, then measure out ¾ cup.
- Using chopsticks, mix the hot water into the flour until the water is absorbed and most of the loose flour is gone. The dough not be a cohesive ball, but lots of small clumps.
- Carefully check to see if the dough is cool enough to touch. If not, stir it more with the chopsticks to help it cool until you can use your hands to form a ball of dough.
- Knead it for 30 seconds. Long enough to collect all of the small clumps into a cohesive ball. It will be relatively soft from the hot water, but not necessarily smooth.
- Wrap in plastic wrap. After a 30 minute rest, the dough should be smooth and ready to be portioned and rolled into wrappers.
Combination dough (pan fried/steam-fried dumplings):
- Using the directions above for cold and hot water dough, prepare both doughs as instructed. When each is done, knead the two doughs together. It may be rather stiff initially. If so, cover and allow it to rest for a few minutes, then knead it again to ensure the doughs are well combined.
Notes:
- Chopsticks are great for mixing small amounts of dough because the dough doesn’t have a lot of surface area to stick to. It’s easy to use one chopstick to scrape any sticky dough off of the other as needed.
- There are three basic methods for cooking dumplings, it each method has a recommended (but not required) style of dough preparation (above). Here are a set of instructions for all 3 ways to cook dumplings!