How to Form Dumplings

hey there folks today I'm going to teach you how to shape pork dumplings it's not too tricky but you know you need a few times to get the hang of it I've got my dough rounds all ready to go and I've rolled this about as thinly as I can about 1/16 of an inch and I also have my filling already made and Porcia know I've got two hands on this and I'm going to create one plate we're gonna do five total so the right hand is gonna be forming the pleats and the left hand is gonna be holding them in place a second plate here and a third one and we are looking to not overlap on the pleats for pleats and the fifth plate you can see here that this has created a little Bowl to kind of put the filling in too so we're ready for that now I've scooped this with a number one hundred scoop that's about 2 teaspoons of filling and then you're gonna take this side the smooth side without any pleats and bring it up over the filling to meet the pleated side and I'm gonna set that on the counter to do that bring it up you can see I'm gonna press these together and kind of tamp the dumpling down to get a flat bottom and now so that the dough isn't too thick we're gonna pinch this together and create it into a single layer of dough that way it'll cook really evenly and you won't have any kind of tough spots so now that I've pinched this I kind of like to twist the ends in just a little bit to get sort of a crescent shape going on here there we go we've got the first one done so we'll move on to another one going in for the next one pleating with the right hand holding with the left and you can see when you flip it up like this you can see your blades they're not overlapping not too big

we've got our fifth and final plate and again you can see that we've got a little bowl here we're gonna take our scoop of filling and put it right in there that's okay to take take a minute and kind of adjust it in there to make your life a little bit easier wipe the gradual off your hands if you come across you know one of your dough rounds maybe isn't quite big enough to seal it's okay if you want to stretch out this smooth part of the dough to be a little bit bigger make sure you're getting that enclosed all right there we go pinch flat bottom and that flat bottom is the bottom you're going to use to sear if you're going to do the pan frying method of the dumpling cookery but don't want a pan fry you can boil these and you can steam them surprisingly the boiled dumplings were my favorite even though I thought the pan-fried ones would be okay here we go another one now that you know how to form your dumplings you're gonna need to know how to cook them and there's three simple methods you can steam them boil them or pan fry them and you can find those methods in issue 139 and there'll be plenty of details there to get that done so we hope that you'll give this a try and have fun doing it thanks so much