How to Make Mongolian Dumplings

Do you love eating or cooking yummy foods from different cultures? Well I do. I love eating and cooking many different meals from different cultures and countries, but my traditional Mongolian Dumplings are the best. My purpose of my speech is to teach you how to make Mongolian traditional dumplings with cabbage salad in your own kitchen. There are very easy three steps such as collecting ingredients, preparation and process of making dumplings and cabbage salad.

First of all, for the ingredients all you need to have is: 3 cups of all purpose flour, 1 ? pounds of beef, 2 carrot, 1 cabbage, 4 cloves of garlic, ? onions, white vinegar, vegetable oil, 2 teaspoons of salt and little bit of black ground peeper for better taste. You can find these ingredients about in any grocery store you like to shop for your groceries. When you have all the ingredients of the dumplings we can go to the preparation. First, prepare the dough mixture. Put about 3 cups of flour into a large mixing bowl.

Slowly mix in ? cup water to make dough that is not too dry or too moist. Knead the dough on a floured board for a few minutes. Cover it with the bowl and let it sit or rest as the Mongolians say for 15 minutes. In the mean time, finely mince or cut the beef and place it in a bowl, and add the shredded carrot, chopped cabbage, garlic and onions. Vegetarians often replace the meat with mashed potatoes, cabbage and carrots, or if you like lamb meat or pork you can replace the meat but I love it with horse meat.

Anyway, add additional spice to taste into meat, along with salt. Finally mix in about half cup of water to give the meat its juices. After the dough has rested, knead it again for 2 to 3 minutes and then slice it into long strips about 1” wide. Roll each strip on floured board to make long dough snakes, which you then cut into small pieces, about 1”by 1”. Squish each piece flat in the palms of your hands to make what look like small round cookies. Lightly coat these pieces with flour in the bowl and then flatten each with a rolling pin into a thin round piece of dough.

Now you are ready to make dumplings. Holding the dough piece in the palm of your one hand, scoop a heaping teaspoon of the meat mixture into the middle of the dough piece. With the thumb of one hand and the fingers of the other, fold the dough up and over the meat, pinching the edges together to create the dumpling shape. Mongolians make dumplings in different shapes: mouse shaped, rose shaped, flower shaped, and even some other shapes I don’t even know how to name them, but the round yurt- shaped dumplings are the most common.

Round yurt- shaped dumplings have usually small holes at the top of each dumpling where the edges of the dough come together and the steam will escape out. Now dip the bottom of each dumpling in vegetable oil to keep it from sticking to the base of the steamer pan and then place each onto a steamer pan, making sure that they are not touching to each other. Steam the dumplings in a boiling steamer for 15 minutes. While you are waiting for dumplings to get cooked you can start making the cabbage salad; it takes about 10 minutes to make it.

All you have to do is chop the cabbage and carrot into very thin strips, mix them with 5-6 tablespoon of vegetable oil or olive oil is even better, half teaspoon of salt, maybe a pinch or two sugar and add white vinegar as much as you wanted until you get the satisfying taste, and you made Mongolian cabbage salad. Before taking the dumplings out of the steamer, it is important to waft air over them with the steamer lid for 30 seconds or so, so as to keep the flour from becoming doughy.

Now pile the dumplings onto a serving plate and take immediately to the table to serve with cabbage salad and milk tea. Mongolians are usually eat dumplings with their fingers, biting into each and then sucking out the hot juices before consuming rest of the dumplings. We also love to eat dumplings dipped in soy sauce, ketchup, and even hot chili sauce. Now you have all the information to make Mongolian dumplings in your own kitchen with these 3 easy steps.