Perfect Potstickers?
You might ask, what are potstickers? I was wondering myself what they were when I opened America's Test Kitchen Cookbook to the Let's Do Takeout chapter and saw the first recipe listed entitled Perfect Potstickers. There is a picture of them above the recipe, but that didn't really tell me what they were because I had not recognized them from any of the Chinese restaruants I have eaten at. The book stated, "To achieve the "perfect potsticker" there goal was to create soft, savory pillows filled with tender ground meat and crunchy cabbage and spiked with a pleasing hit of garlic, ginger, and soy. And they didn't want to make the wrappers from scratch." Hmmm. So this recipe can be made in advance, which from my experience is probably what you want to do especially if you plan on having other items with them. The filling is very easy to make, basically like making meatloaf except with ground pork, cabbage, and scallions. The time consuming part (the part I became frustrated with) is the working with the wrappers. The recipe suggested to purchase 24 round gyoza wrappers...what's that??? Ok, so there is a side note that you can subsitute wonton wrappers instead. Oh great! I know actually what those are and where to find them at the grocery store (fyi: I'm being extremely sarcastic). After many trips up and down the Asian food isle and frozen food isle at Meijer, I finally located them in the produce section (go figure) by the mushrooms. What I found were wonton wrappers and they were square.
The filling process seemed simple enough on paper and even simpler with a step-by-step picture process on the next page, but I struggled on the first few. The book stated that they prefer round wrappers, I had square. They said if using square wrappers, fold diagonally into a triangle. Ok I did that. The book states, fill 1 tablespoon of filling into 1 wonton wrapper. Problem. One tablespoon is way to much for my square wrappers. Filling is pushing out everywhere and I had a major problem trying to get the wrappers sealed. I finally determined that 1/2 tablespoon worked well on the square wrappers then folding them over into a triangle and sealing the filling in. To seal the filling I first got a bowl of water for my fingers and dampened the wrapper before placing the filling on them. Once the filling was on, and the wrapper was slightly damp the sealing process went fairly easy by just pressing and pinching the air pockets out of the dumpling.
After about 15 minutes of doing this, I realized that I had hardly made a dent on the filling. This was going to take forever. So, I thought maybe I would try using 2 wrappers with 1 tablespoon of filling. This worked, but end result was too big of a serving. Also, I had left over filling. I used that to make meatballs. Once the potstickers were made, they were very easy to cook, you just have to make a small batch at a time. That was fine, because fortunately the potstickers freeze very well. So you don't have to cook them all in one day.
The scallion dipping sauce can also be made up to 24 hours in advance, but not really necessary it only took about 5 minutes to put together. It had a very good, spicy flavor to it.
Now for my review on the potstickers. Despite their ugly appearance, they are quite good. My son gobble up several of them right away. He wasn't a big fan of the sauce because it was a little too hot for his liking. My husband was leery about trying them because he said that he had had them before and didn't like them. But after begging him to just try one he said that he liked them and the dipping sauce very well and then proceeded to eat more.
I don't know if I will make these again after I use up my freezer store, because they did take a long time to make. Perhaps if I come across some better wrappers I may give it a try, but if you want to take the time to make them, go for it, they tasted great!
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