CLIFFORD NEUMAN, COOKING, RECIPES, HOME TECHNOLOGY, HIKING.

Pot Stickers/Peking Ravioli - Pan Fried

These pork dumplings are steamed then pan fried and served with a spicy sauce. These are sometimes called dumplings, ravs, pot stickers, peking ravioli, or jiaoz. You will find many variations of this at different restaurants, some are good, some not so good. My favorite are the Peking Ravioli at Mary Chung's restaurant in Cambridge Massachusetts, and this recipe comes close to matching them.

More recipes:

Ingredients:

Skins:

  You may use purchased dumpling skins or use the bread
  machine recipe that follows.

  1 Egg beaten, to seal the potstickers.

Filling:
  1 lb     Ground Pork
  3/4 Inch Fresh Ginger (chopped to consistency of coarse bread crumbs)
  4        Scalions (chopped to size of match heads)
  3/4 tsp  Ground roasted Szechwan Pepper
  1/2 tsp  Salt
  1 tbsp   Corn starch
  2 tbsp   Soy sauce
  2 tsp    Sesame oil
  1        Egg

There are many variations on the dipping sauce and I list some of these below. The first variation is inspired by the sauce for "ravs" at Mary Chung's Restaurant in Cambridge (near Boston). I doubt this is the actual recipe, but this seems to be a pretty good match.


Using the following proportion:
 (this is good for about 24 pot stickers):
    2 Tbsp Dark Soy Sauce (regular Soy Sauce is also acceptable)
    2 Tbsp Hoisin Sauce
    1 tsp  Black Rice Vinegar
  1/8 tsp  garlic powder (do not use fresh garlic)
  1/2 tsp  Sugar
    2 tsp  Crushed red pepper
  3/4 inch Bamboo shoot (cut crosswise 1/8 inch thick then in half)

The secon variation on the dipping sauce is also pretty good, yet quite different.


Using the following proportions 
 (this is good for about 24 pot stickers):
    4 Tbsp Soy Sauce
    1 tsp  Black Rice Vinegar
    1 tsp  Sesame Oil
  1/8 tsp  garlic powder (do not use fresh garlic)
  5/8 cup  Water
1+3/4 tsp  Sugar
    2 tsp  Hot pepper flakes in oil [1 part Red Pepper to 1 part Peanut Oil]
           (or 2 tsp hot oil and 2 tsp crushed red pepper)

Mix the ingredients for the filling thoroughly.

Flour sheet on which to place the potstickers until they are ready to cook.

Add 2 tsp of the filling to each potsticker skin. Wet a finger with the beaten egg and move around edge of potsticker skin. Fold skin around filling and pinch the edges to seal. There is an art to doing this, although I have never mastered it. You may optionally use a potsticker press if available, but some consider that cheating.

Cooking

There are many different ways to cook there, from steaming to pan frying, to boiling and then pan frying, or steaming and then pan frying. The best way to cook them is to steam them for 6 minutes, then add peanut oil to a large frying pan. Once hot, place one layer of ravs in pan and cook until they start to brown on one side, then flip and cook on a second side until also slightly brown. Do not overcook or the skins will get hard.

Alternatively, to cook in a single step, add peanut oil to a large frying pan. Place one layer of the potstickers in the pan and cook until they start to brown on one side. Add 3/4 cup hot water, cover, and cook for 6 more minutes or until water evaporates.

The Sauce

Choose one of the variations (in the ingredient list above), mix the sauce ingredients in a jar and shake throroughly. Pour into small bowls for dipping the pot stickers.

The Potsticker Skins

There are many ways to make the potsticker skins. In some parts of the countryu, you can by them premade in the grocery store, or in a Chinese market. These are not the square won-ton skins, but are the round skins for pot-stickers or jiaoz. You can also make them from scratch. If making them from scratch, I provide two of doing so below, and then discuss how to roll them into the right shape and thikness.

Potsticker skins in a breadmaker

To make the potsticker skins from scratch in a bread machine (these turn out much better than the store bought skins, but it is very time consuming), find the recipe for pizza dough that came with your bread machine and reduce the amount of yeast to 1/3 what appears in the recipe.

Potsticker skins without a breadmaker breadmaker

If you do not have a bread machine, you can mix 14 cups flour to 4.5 cups water and knead by hand, adjusting with added flour until it reaches a dough consistency. This will be a lot of work.

Rolling and shaping the potsticker skins by hand

When the dough is ready, flower a cutting board and roll out the the desired thickness with a rolling pin. These should be very thin and it can take quite a lot of work to roll the dough to a sheet so thin. You can also use a pasta machine ( the manual crank style for rolling pasta ) to roll the dough into sheets of the desired thickness. Once rolled, cut in circles approximately 4 inches in diameter using an inverted container of the desired size. Add the scraps back into the remaining dough, roll out again, and repeat.

Alternatively, you can take a ball of dough about 3/4 of an inch in diameter and roll it until it forms a flat circle about 4 inches in diameter. This second approach may be easier, but will likely produce skins that are less perfectly round.

Learn more about
Szechwan cooking.
Read Mrs. Chiang's
Szechwan Cookbook