Chicken, Cabbage & Cellophane Noodles Dumplings

Yet another chicken dumplings recipe. What can I say, I love my homemade dumplings! My first dumpling post was mainly jotting down my friend’s recipe and since then, I’m hooked on making and  savouring them.

Bye, bye frozen dumplings!

You’re so yesterday!

Although dumpling addiction is not your typical mainstream food addiction like chocolate, I’m definitely not going to shy away from it. In fact, I’m so comfortable with making dumplings that I start to deviate from my friend’s original recipe by adding some of my personal tweaks to it.

Mainly instead of adding the chinese cooking wine, I added dried shitake mushrooms as my flavouring. If you don’t have the dried ones at home,  you can always replace them with fresh ones, bearing in mind that the dried ones are more intense in aroma than the fresh ones. Also to add some texture to the filling, I added finely chopped cellophane noodles. Since these noodles have a firm “jello-like” texture, they give the filling a bit more bite which I quite enjoy.

Chicken, Cabbage & Cellophane Noodles Dumpling

(A fuss free cooking recipe)

Prep & wrapping time: 1.5 hours (assuming one person wrapping all the dumplings)

Cooking time: 15 minutes

Makes about 45 dumplings (20 to 25 dumplings is my threshold)

Ingredients:

45 jiao zi wrappers (be careful not to be mistaken with wonton wrappers)
500g (18 oz) store-bought minced chicken
50g (2 oz) cellophane noodles (about a small bundle)
1/4 cabbage
4 dried shitake mushrooms
4 stalks of spring onions
4 garlic cloves
4cm (1.5 inched) thick ginger
1.5 tbsps light soy sauce
1/2 tbsp sesame oil
1/2 tbsp ground white pepper
2 tbsps salt
Plenty of boiling water (in order to rehydrate the dried shitake mushrooms, cellophane noodles & to cook the dumplings)

Method:

20 minutes before you start working on the filling or even a day before, rehydrate the dried shitake mushrooms in bowl by pouring boiling water over them and use a cling wrap or a plate to seal the top of the bowl. Set aside.
Start by slicing the cabbage as thinly as you can and set aside in a large bowl (call it mixing bowl A). Sprinkle 2 tbsps of salt and mix well with the cabbage. This is to draw the liquid out of the cabbage, as if pickling it. It take about at least 10 minutes when you notice there’s some liquid at the bottom of the mixing bowl.

{dehydrate the cabbage a little with salt in mixing bowl A}

In the meantime, pour some boiling water over the cellophane noodles and set aside until it softens and…..

Squeeze the water out from the shitake mushrooms, discard the liquid. Finely dice the mushrooms and slice the spring onions. Then using a grater, grate the garlic and ginger. Put all these ingredients on a separate large mixing bowl (call it mixing bowl B). Set aside.

{Mixing bowl B}

{Side note: To grate the ginger, I skinned the portion which I was going to use. This way I don’t have to worry about accidentally grating my finger, if you know what I mean. )

Squeeze the water out from the cabbage then add it into mixing bowl B with the spring onion – ginger etc mixture. Drain the cellophane noodles and chop them into the size of uncooked rice, add into mixing bowl B as well. Add minced chicken, soy sauce, sesame oil and white pepper into mixing bowl B and mix to combine all the ingredients using one hand. You’ll end up with a chicken dough looking like the photo below.

Get ready to wrap your dumplings. Before that, I’ve laid out my mini assembly line as follows. I have 2 teaspoons in my photo because my friend was helping me with the wrapping. Lucky me, eh?

And don’t forget a comfortable chair. I’m not as skilled as a dumpling master and therefore it’s going to take me a while to get through the wrapping. So it helps to sit down, music or tv on and start wrapping comfortably. Better still, invite a friend to help. Many hands make light work.

Wrap away. Please check out the photo tutorial on one-pleat dumpling wrapping technique. It’s quite easy once you get a hang of it.

To cook the dumplings: placed the dumplings in batches in boiling water. It?s important not to crowd the dumplings in the pot to avoid them sticking together. I used a 20 cm (8 inched) wide pot and I cook the dumplings in 3 batches (about 15 per batch). When you drop the dumplings into the boiling water, remember to stir the dumplings gently to make sure they don’t stick at the bottom. Uncooked dumplings sink, cooked dumplings float. That said, I timed about 5 minutes  per batch on medium-high heat to make sure they are thoroughly cooked.  Check how they are cooked on the first batch and adjust your timing accordingly.


Use a ladle (preferably straining ladle if you have one) and remove the cooked dumplings from the water and serve immediately. If not, try to lay them out individually on a lightly greased tray as the dumplings will stick together as they cool.

Note: For those who own a food processor with chopping function, you can run the cabbage through it and set aside with salt. Then process the ginger and garlic until resemble fine paste. Add spring onion, cellophane noodles and mushrooms into the food processor. Lightly process them until they resemble finely chopped mixture. Then mix in the chicken and squeezed cabbage with the mixture by hand. I won’t recommend to process the chicken with the other ingredients as this will make the filling really dense and bouncy like fish balls.