Secret Beef Dumpling Recipe

Lao Lao Liu's Chinese 'Jiao Zi' Dumplings

How many dumplings can you eat?
Plump parcels of juicy beef with fragrant ginger and fresh vegetables – perfect for sharing.

Preparation: 20 minutes
Cooking: 20 minutes
Makes approximately 60 dumplings

Ingredients

500g lean beef mince
2 small carrots, finely grated
10 button mushrooms, finely diced
3 eggs, lightly beaten
3 green onions, finely chopped (plus extra for serving)
5cm piece of ginger, finely chopped
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp soy sauce (plus extra for serving)
1 tsp oyster sauce
1 tsp sesame oil (plus extra for serving)
1/3 cup (80mL) vegetable oil
500g plain flour to make wrappers (plus extra to roll) or 2 packs pre-made wonton wrappers (30 in each pack)
Rice vinegar and finely chopped fresh chilli for serving

Method

In a lightly oiled non-stick frying pan, cook carrot over medium heat for 1-2 minutes. Set aside in a medium bowl. In same pan cook mushrooms for 1-2 minutes and add to bowl with carrot. Cool slightly.
Meanwhile in same oiled pan, cook egg for 1-2 minutes each side to make pancake shape. Cool slightly and cut egg pancake into small pieces.
In a large bowl, combine beef mince, cooked carrot, mushroom, egg, onion, ginger, salt, soy and oyster sauces and sesame oil.
In a separate large bowl, mix flour with enough water to make a dough (slowly add water to avoid it being too wet). Divide dough into four. Lightly flour a clean bench top or chopping board and shape dough pieces into long snake shapes. Cut each into 15 little dough pieces to make 60 and roll dough pieces into round wrappers using a rolling pin (or use pre-made wonton wrappers).
Spoon a tablespoon of beef mixture into each wrapper. To make dumplings, fold and press using fingers to seal and crimp edges.
To lightly fry, heat 1 tablespoon vegetable oil in a large frying pan (with a lid) over medium heat. Add 1/4 of the dumplings and cook for 1-2 minutes until bottoms are crisp and golden. Add enough water to cover halfway up the dumplings and cover with lid. Cook until water has evaporated and dumplings are tender. Repeat process with remaining oil and dumplings.
Serve dumplings with vinegar, extra soy sauce, sesame oil, extra green onions and fresh chilli, if desired.

Tips:
If your dumplings are failing to stick together, try dabbing the edges of your dough with a little bit of water before folding over.
If the filling tries to escape when folding your dumplings, don't panic! Just push it back into your dumpling and keep folding.
To boil dumplings, bring a large saucepan of water to the boil. Cook dumplings in batches of 15, stirring to avoid sticking, for 7-8 minutes or until dumplings float to the top. Drain well.
To steam dumplings, line a bamboo steamer with baking paper. Place dumplings in a single layer into the steamer. Place steamer over a wok of boiling water, ensuring the base doesn't touch water. Steam dumplings for 15-20 minutes or until tender and cooked through.

Grandma's Secret Beef Dumpling Recipe

Learn how to make beef jiao zi with this adorable Chinese grandma.

Dumplings may just be the universal bite-sized language of love, but how many of us actually know how to make them from scratch? Australian Beef thought it was about time Aussies learnt how to make authentic Chinese dumplings from a true expert.

Meet Aussie foodie and dumpling lover Amy and her Lao Lao (grandmother in Chinese; which actually translates to 'old old' in English), here to impart her dumpling wisdom. The passing down of family recipes is an essential ingredient in Amy's culture, so we invited Lao Lao Liu to share her secret recipe and teach Amy (and the rest of us) the subtle art of the dumpling.

Moving from China to Australia at the age of six, Amy's Lao Lao would regularly have a steaming plate of jiao zi - the juicy crescent-shaped dumplings also known as potstickers - ready for her when she came to visit. To Lao Lao Liu, dumplings represent spending time with her family, remembering vividly her mother first teaching her to make the recipe for Chinese New Year when she was just five.

Amy translates Lao Lao Liu's memory for us -"The whole family would sit around the table stuffing dumplings and sharing stories – it's one of my fondest memories. It was also tradition in our household to hide a gold coin inside one of the dumplings on Chinese New Year, giving its finder good luck in the year ahead. Amy discovered this the hard way when she almost broke her tooth on a coin as a child!"

Despite these delicious mouthfuls being more popular than ever (searches for dumplings on Google have doubled since 2014*), Amy never actually learnt how to prepare dumplings from scratch, so Australian Beef teed up an intimate cooking lesson for Lao Lao Liu to pass down her treasured beef dumpling recipe. Of course we were there to document the whole thing and the authentic Chinese jiao zi were much simpler to cook than you might expect.

Making the perfect dumplings: Lao Lao Liu's words of wisdom

Preparing the filling
Lao Lao Liu: "When chopping up the carrots, mushrooms, ginger and spring onions, it's important to cut everything very finely to create a smooth and tender texture."

Amy: "Those knife skills are impressive Lao Lao! Do you normally keep the skin on the ginger?"

Lao Lao Liu: "Well of course - it's traditional this way and gives more flavour."

Lao Lao Liu: "Once you've cooked off the carrot, mushroom and cut up the omelette, I like to use chopsticks to mix all the ingredients with the beef mince – no horrible metal spoon please! Amy: "Lao Lao you never actually measure anything out – how am I going to remember?"

Lao Lao Liu: "When you've been making them for so long I guess I can tell by sight how much soy sauce, oyster sauce, salt and sesame oil are needed to season the mix. Don't worry though I'll write down the recipe!"

Rolling the dumpling dough
Lao Lao Liu: "Take about a quarter of the dough and roll into a long sausage shape, then slice off little pieces with a knife. Squish each chunk of dough down, then it's time to roll. The trick is to turn each piece of dough by a quarter while rolling with a rolling pin until you've got a paper-thin circle. Then place the rounds onto a floured tray, ready to be filled."

Amy: "Ok, but what if you can't master the dumpling dough like me?"

Lao Lao Liu: "Of course you can use wonton wrappers for an easy option but I don't know what my mother would say if she knew that's what people do!"

Filling the dumplings
Lao Lao Liu: "With your chopsticks take a small amount of mixture and place it in the centre of the dough circle. Fold the dough over to make a semi-circle shape, pinching the two sides of the wrapper together at the centre point of the dumpling's seam. Then crimp one side into the middle, like a concertina. Do this on the other side until you've got a crescent shape. Easy! Now it's your turn Amy…"

Amy: "Here goes..!"
Lao Lao Liu: "Hmm, it looks a little ugly. Maybe some practice is needed!"

Cooking the dumplings
Lao Lao Liu: "Cooking dumplings has to be the easiest thing – whether you boil, steam or fry them. I like mine lightly fried and dipped in Chinkiang vinegar, delicious!"

Lao Lao Liu: "To fry place dumpling in a pan (with a lid) and fry in a little vegetable oil, then add enough water to cover half the dumplings and pop the lid on. They'll be ready in a few minutes once they've cooked through and got a crispy bottom. Serve with soy sauce, vinegar, sesame oil, extra chilli and spring onion and get dipping!"

Visit: www.australianbeef.com.au