Dumplings and Shit

There is just something so elegant about random shit packed into a ball of carbs. It exists in absolutely every advanced culture:

Italian: Ravioli, stuffed-crust pizza

Mexican: Empanada, taco

Indian: Samosas

Russian: Pirozhki

French: not an advanced culture

Asian: Dumplings

American: EVERYTHING

It's really so simple! Take something, cook it, and then put it in something made of some sort of carb. Name one thing that wouldn't taste good wrapped in dough and fried and I'll tell you you're wrong and we'll try and make it together! But don't try and be cute and say "poop" or "AIDS" 'cause I'll fucking cut you.

Dumplings, the Asian version of the pig in a blanket, are up there along with diet coke and fried chicken as undisputed favorite things for me to eat. New York has TONS of Asians, so I was popping this shit all the time. But, nothing will taste better to me than my mom's dumplings.

Imagine biting into something crispy yet very tender. It starts off with that wonderful taste of seared dough and then immediately the juices from the meat filling explode onto your tongue. The ginger and the garlic flavors and smells immediately hit you and soon you feel the textures of the meat and the chopped cabbage and glass noodles. In a few more bites, that shit is GONE. Pair that with a bowl of steaming ramen and you're set for a New York January during winter break.

But beyond eating them, making dumplings is a process and a joy in itself. You make the filling and you have the little pre-packaged dough wrappers and suddenly you're fucking Michelangelo. When I would make them with my mom, sometimes I would try and get creative and deviate from the standard crescent moon design. My mom always encouraged my creativity, and would point to the misshapen ones to our guests after they were cooked and proudly tell them that I helped make them. But BILLIONS OF ASIANS AGREE: the crescent moon shape works!

I'll never forget the last time I made dumplings with my mom (We call them "mandu" in Korean). She always complimented me the way I folded the tops of them, like pleats in a dress. I think because we both have above-average spacial reasoning skills (it's true. Watch me pack sweaters into a box one day if you have nothing else to do), I was always able to place the right amount of mixture into the dough so that it didn't spill out but just enough that you got some nice juicy pork when you bit into it.

We always use the time sitting on the cold kitchen floor to talk about things. Ever since I went to college, conversations with my mom have gotten longer and longer because even silences are meaningful when you see people every day. She always asks what I'm learning, and I'll tell her some convoluted academic bull shit and she'll just say "mmhmm" and tell me to "learn more and do things better."

Anyway, these conversations are always great, except sometimes they can get confrontational.

An example:

Me: I love making mandu with you. Do you remember when I used to-

Mom: HAS JESUS LEFT YOUR LIFE?!?!?!

That scared the shit out of me because it came out of fucking nowhere. I swear, we were probably talking about proper eye care because it was around the time I got my new glasses. Beyond being time to catch up with me, it's time for my mom to tell me to do a variety of things that fall into three broad categories:

1. Make babies immediately with a wide-hipped Korean woman

2. Pray to Jesus to help me get a perfect score on the MCAT

3. Try alternative medicine because sticking needles in my thigh will fix my weight problem

Anyways, eventually we'll be done and I'll weave my way carefully around these questions ("All the wide-hipped Korean girls I know are Catholic," "Mom, if Jesus gave EVERY Korean kid a perfect score on the MCAT, then how would the white kids feel?" and "The last acupuncturist I saw molested me.") We'll put our several dozen dumplings in the steamer and watch a Korean soap together and then we'll eat the ugly ones and then feed them to my dad, who FLIPS A SHIT whenever we make dumplings.

So here's roughly how I remember how to make dumplings, the Jung Ok Rim way:

Ingredients:

Veggies

A cabbage

A few carrots

Onion

Chives (what the fuck are chives? I think that's what they're called. They're scallion-like. Maybe they're actually scallions)

Other veggies I've seen my mom use are carrots and mashed potato!

Real ingredients

A meat of your choice

Other shit

glass noodles

sugar

salt

soy sauce

sesame oil

honey

ground garlic and ginger

Instructions:

Chop up the veggies all fine and niceee. Toss them all together and set aside. I shouldn't have to explain this part all that hard.

TAKE THE GROUND MEAT and then add in a bit of salt, sugar, soy sauce, sesame oil, honey, and ground ginger and garlic. It should smell wonderful! If it doesn't, then you're doing something really wrong. Anyway, mix this up very well (use your hands! Like my mom says, using utensils is for pussies) and then combine this with the vegetables. If you want, then cook up some glass noodles in hot water, chop them up, and combine too!

THEN, this is the fun part. Make sure you have a clean workspace and sprinkle some flour or potato starch on a tray that you will use to place your dumplings after you've made them. Take a package of dumpling wrappers and open it. You can make these on your own, but why do that when it's cheaper to buy the packets yourself?

Take a small spoonful of your mixture and put it in the middle of the wrapper. Take some water dip your finger in it and wet the circumference of the wrapper. Then, press the sides together as if you were folding it in half, and WHA-BLAMO! You just made a dumpling!

Now, if you want to get all fancy and shit like me and my mom then you can pleat the tops. They are purely cosmetic but maybe they seal the filling better. Once you have a lot of these, get your steamer ready! If you don't have a steamer on hand, it's easy! Just get a frying pan, put on some sesame oil and then fry them for about 2-3 minutes. Then, pour a little bit of water into your pan and then cover. You'll get wonderfully steamed dumplings on one side and they'll also be fried on the other. Best of both worlds!

Enjoy with your favorite dipping sauce. Here's a favorite of mine. It's something I made up!

Soy sauce

Sesame oil (a little bit)

Siracha sauce

Sesame seeds

Honey

(Honestly, like i've said before, anything tastes good wrapped in dough and fried, so try whatever you want)

There you have it! My culture's incarnation of the pig in a blanket! These are perfect when you have a bunch of people who are coming over and only have half the day to prepare something for them that will disappear in a matter of minutes.

PS My acupuncturist did not actually molest me