The first time I was intro­duced to dumpling-making was at my friend Mingzhe Wang’s house about three years ago. Since that night, I must have made dumplings dozens more times in collab­o­ra­tion with various combi­na­tions of family and friends. Every time, I end up passing along the recipe to someone; I like to think that those people even­tu­ally instruct a few of their friends on it, and that Ming has an expo­nen­tially growing army of dumpling disci­ples. In the hopes of encour­ag­ing such growth, here is my tran­scrip­tion of the recipe. It’s pretty labor inten­sive, so it’s good to split the work up among a large group of hungry people. What I espe­cially like, though, is the flex­i­bil­ity of this recipe— most things in the filling are strictly optional, and you can fool around with the propor­tions until you reach your personal dumpling nirvana.

Ming’s Dumplings

Filling:

1 lb. ground pork, not too lean, plenty fat
1 lb. raw shrimp, all chopped up
shitake mush­rooms, chopped fine
a few large leaves Chinese cabbage, shredded real good
cilantro
scal­lions or Chinese chives
bamboo shoots
water chestnuts
fresh ginger
soy sauce
salt

Dumplings (makes around 100):

3 pkg. Hong Kong-style dumpling wrappers (or make your own)
Peanut or other high-heat cooking oil
water

Dipping sauce:

Soy sauce (1/3)
Chinese black rice vinegar (2/3)
Ginger
Garlic
Chili and/or sesame oil

Fold the dumplings. Put about a table­spoon of filling in the center of each wrapper. Dip your finger in water and run it along the edge of the wrapper. Then fold it in half over the filling, and crimp the edges toward the center.

Heat up a heavy pan (prefer­ably cast iron or non-stick) until it is really hot (to burn off all the residue). Then pour in a small puddle of oil. It should be smoking hot. Put in the dumplings, fairly close together. Don’t move them until they form a crust. Once they have a nice brown crust, pour in about ¹⁄₄ cup water and cover pan, leaving a small opening for steam to escape. Once water cooks off, flip the dumplings on their sides, make another crust, serve and devour. Hot. With the sauce. And a Cold One.