Gorgeous Gyoza Soup

Gyoza are Japanese dumplings.  Gyoza originated in China, but have since become a popular Japanese dish. Gyoza can be steamed, boiled in soup or pan fried and traditionally have a filling containing either pork or prawns, and almost always contain cabbage.  Once made, gyoza freeze really well too - so whilst you're busy stuffing dumplings, you may as well make plenty and throw them in the freezer ready for a rainy day.


Rather than making the dough from scratch, you can buy pre-made dumpling wrappers in any decent Asian supermarket.  Then it's just a case of making the filling.


To make around 30 gyoza you'll need:


Dumpling wrappers (30 or so)
250g minced pork
1/4 head of finely chopped cabbage
3 spring onions, finely sliced
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1tbsp soy sauce
1tsp sesame oil
2cm piece of ginger, grated
A handful of chives, chopped
Salt
Pepper


What to do:


Mix the pork with all of the other ingredients in a mixing bowl.  Don't be shy - get your hands in and really work the ingredients together.  This needs to be well mixed so that the flavours are distributed evenly throughout the mixture.


Next, take a dumpling wrapper and grab a teaspoon.  Put one heaped teaspoon of the mixture in the centre of the circular wrapper.  You don't want to put too much in, otherwise the dumpling won't seal and you'll end up with a messy, burst gyoza.  Next, moisten a semi-circle of the dumpling wrapper with water, and fold the gyoza to create a half moon shaped parcel.  With your forefinger and thumb, pinch the centre of the seal and with the other hand make three pleats on each side of the gyoza towards the centre.  Voila! Gyoza made.  Now repeat this process until you run out of mixture.


For the soup:


For this recipe, I cooked the gyoza in the soup, giving them a soft, moist texture whilst adding some 'bite' to a fresh vegetable broth.


Ingredients:


6 gyoza
1 red chilli, finely sliced
1 vegetable/mushroom stock cube
1/2 baby bok choy, chopped
2 mushrooms, sliced
1/4 cup edamame
6 sugar snap peas
1/2 carrot thinly sliced (I used the slicing side of a cheese grater)
1 tbsp soy sauce
1/2 tsp nam pla (fish sauce)


What to do:


Boil the kettle and add the stock cube in a pan with 1 1/2 cups boiling water.
Throw in the chilli, soy sauce, sesame oil, nam pla and carrot and allow to boil for 2 minutes.
Next, reduce the heat and add the edamame and gyoza and allow to cook for 4-5 minutes.
Add the mushrooms, sugar snap peas and mushrooms and continue cooking for a further 2-3 minutes.


Then - serve!  


To eat this the authentic Japanese way, use chopsticks to eat the gyoza and veggies and then slurp up the wonderful spicy soup broth.  There we go.... a meal in literally minutes!