Vegetable Pot Stickers

I have been wanting to make pot stickers for a while.  It has been ages since I made them – mainly because you need to eat them as soon as they are made.  So it is not something that I can handle easily for big parties.  In fact, if there are more than three families, I don’t think I can possibly keep up!  

Yesterday, while deciding what to make for dinner, I started asking my family questions like “Indian, or non-Indian”, “Asian, Italian, Mexican, or Mediterranean”.  After eliminating a lot of these, we ended up deciding on Chinese for dinner.  I don’t make Chinese as often as I should.  We have a couple of fantastic Chinese restaurants close by and tend to take-out food from there regularly.  But yesterday, I was in the mood to cook some Chinese at home.
 

Our dinner yesterday was vegetable pot stickers, clear vegetable soup, and vegetarian udon noodles.   My husband had forgotten what pot stickers were (it has been so long since I made them), but once he started eating them, he couldn’t stop! 

This is a really healthy appetizer, because it is cooked by steaming and you use very little oil to make it.  

 

 Here is what you need:

(to make about 30)

For the filling:

• 2 tsp. oil
• 1” piece ginger, minced
• 2 green chilies, minced
• 2 – 3 stalks of green onion, chopped
• 1 large carrot, grated
• 1 green bell pepper, julienned into 1” pieces
• ½ medium cabbage, shredded
• salt to taste
• freshly ground black pepper, to taste
• Tamari low-sodium soy sauce, to taste 

For the wrapper:

• about 30 circular dumpling wrappers

To make the pot stickers

• 2 – 3 tsp. oil

Ingredients for the filling

Cooked filling

 

Mold and wrapper

Wrapper with filling

Pot stickers waiting to be cooked

Here is how I made it:

1. Heat oil in a wok or pan - on high heat.  Add ginger, green chilies, and green onion. 
2. After about 30 seconds, add carrots and green peppers.  Cook on high heat for 2 – 3 minutes, tossing often. 
3. Add salt, soy sauce, pepper, and cabbage.  Turn off the heat.  Mix well.  Remember that the soy sauce has salt in it. So don’t add too much salt.  Set aside.
4. Take the wrappers, one at a time and place it on the mold.  I used the mold, but these wrappers are easy enough to work with that you can seal the edges by hand – just pinch the edges together.
5. Wet the wrapper with water.
6. Place a couple of teaspoons full of the filling into the wrapper. Close the mold to press and seal.
7. Repeat until all the filling is done.
8. Place a frying pan on the stove and turn it on.  Add a little bit of oil – I used 1 tsp. per batch (you can also try non-stick spray)
9. When the oil is hot, place the pot stickers gently into the pan.  I made about 10 in each batch because my pan was big.  Make sure that they don’t touch each other.
10. When the bottom of the pot stickers have turned golden brown, pour about 1/3 cup of water into the pot and cover it.  Let the pot stickers cook in the steam.
11. When all the water has evaporated, the pot stickers are cooked.  Remove them from the pot.
12. Repeat until all the pot stickers are done.

Serve hot with spicy dipping sauce.