Fun to make, delicious to eat: Pork and Cabbage Potstickers

These classic Chinese dumplings are an impressive “yeah-I-made-these” appetizer. Recipe below.

MY POTSTICKERS ARE LIKE SNOWFLAKES. NO TWO LOOK EXACTLY ALIKE. In celebration of Lunar New Year, the fun committee of the ad agency where I work hosted a virtual potsticker-making class. Having made our fillings beforehand from shared recipes, there we were in our Google Meet grid, trialing and erroring our way through filling, folding and pleating our dumplings.

Danielle, my colleague who taught the class, assured us that however the potstickers looked, as long as they held together, they would be delicious and that was all that counted. But we’re a competitive lot. We kept showing each other our latest efforts and asking how many pleats others had managed—seven seemed to be the gold standard. In the end, Danielle was right, of course. Taste wins.

We say this to encourage you to try your own potstickers. Beauty and precision don’t matter. As long as they hold together, they will be delicious. And while making them is a little time consuming, all the steps are pretty easy. Filling and folding them can be a fun shared event around the table or a meditative solitary process while you listen to music or a podcast (or two). You can make your own wrappers, as Danielle did, or use store-bought ones, as the rest of us did. And in the end, you will end up with something, well, delicious—savory, gingery and pretty authentic-tasting.

Potstickers are a kind of Chinese dumpling. They can be steamed or boiled, but they are most often fried first and then steamed in the same pan. Cooking them this way helps them earn their name: the bottoms get golden brown and can sometimes stick to the pot as you fry them (nothing a spatula can’t take care of). We think it also adds to the flavor and creates a nice, crisp bit.

Pork and cabbage is a classic filling for potstickers; we’ve done a version of this here. You can also find recipes for other kinds out  there, including vegetarian and shrimp. Recipes may call for regular green cabbage or the Napa cabbage used in many Asian cuisines. Because we used sturdy green cabbage, we briefly sautéed the vegetables first. You don’t need to cook the pork ahead; cooking the prepared potstickers does the trick. Depending on how much filling you put in each wrapper, this recipe makes 35 to 40 or so potstickers. For us, that meant a meal the night of the class and two bagged batches of frozen potstickers for future us. we hope you’ll try these. Did we mention delicious?

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Pork and Cabbage Potstickers

These classic Chinese dumplings are an impressive "yeah-I-made-these" appetizer.

Course Appetizer, Main Course

Cuisine Chinese

Servings 35 to 40 or so potstickers

Ingredients

• grapeseed or vegetable oil
• 1 1/2 cups finely chopped green cabbage or Napa cabbage (see Kitchen Notes)
• 1/4 cup chopped scallions
• 2 tablespoons minced ginger
• 2 tablespoons minced garlic
• salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1 pound ground pork, preferably 80% lean
• 2 teaspoons potato starch (you can also use cornstarch or tapioca starch—see Kitchen Notes)
• 2 tablespoons water
• 1 tablespoon dry sherry or Chinese Shaoxing wine (see Kitchen Notes)
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 1 1/2 teaspoons sesame oil
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• round dumpling wrappers (see Kitchen Notes)

For the dipping sauce (see Kitchen Notes):

• reduced-sodium soy sauce
• white vinegar

Instructions

• Prepare the filling. If you’re using green cabbage, sauté the vegetables quickly. Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a skillet over medium flame and add cabbage, scallions, ginger and garlic. Cook, stirring frequently, for about 2 minutes, then transfer to a bowl to cool. Season lightly with salt and pepper. If you’re using Napa cabbage, you don’t have to sauté it. Just combine cabbage, scallions, ginger and garlic in a bowl, season it and set aside.
• Put ground pork into a large bowl. Sprinkle the potato starch over it, and add water and sherry. Using a fork or a wooden spoon, thoroughly mix ingredients together, stirring for several minutes. As the liquid and potato starch are incorporated, the mixture should become paste-like, everything holding together.
• Add the vegetables and stir everything together. At this point, you can cover the bowl and store it in the fridge for up to a day, when you’re ready to make the potstickers.
• Assemble the potstickers. Set up a place to put your potstickers as you make them. We lined a hotel pan with a silicone baking sheet; you can also use waxed paper. Have a barely damp dish towel on hand to cover them and keep them from drying out. Also have a small bowl of water on hand.
• We’re using store-bought wrappers. They usually come frozen; thaw them in the fridge overnight or on your counter for a few hours. If you want to make your own, there are recipes out there (and perhaps there will be one here someday—obviously, you need to make them ahead). When you’re ready to start, drape the stack of wrappers with a barely damp paper towel to keep the edges from drying out as you work.
• Place a wrapper in the palm of one hand and, with a spoon, scoop a small bit of filling into the middle of the wrapper—a tablespoon or less. Dip a finger in the water and wet the edges of the wrapper.
• Fold the wrapper in half and seal at the top and along the edges; you want to create a margin around the filling, closing it in. Then starting at one end, use your index finger to fold a pleat on the side away from you. Add another pleat next to it, then another, until you’ve reached the opposite end. Gently but firmly squeeze the pleats between your fingers to completely seal them; if needed, add a little more water with your finger. Place the potsticker on your silicone baking sheet, pressing it down gently to flatten the bottom.
• And there you have it. You’ve made your first potsticker! Now continue making the rest of them, until you’ve used up all of your filling or your wrappers. Your skill will improve as you go (or it won’t, but no worries).
• If you want to watch someone fold a potsticker, here’s a short video by Lilly at How2Heroes. Her method is slightly different from the one we described above, but similar enough to up your comfort level, we hope.
• You can either cook your potstickers now or freeze them for future cooking (or do both, as we did). We’ll explain the freezing process after we tell you how to cook fresh ones.
• Cook your potstickers. We cook 14 to 16 of them for 2 servings. In a large nonstick, lidded sauté pan, heat enough oil to coat the bottom of the pan over medium-high flame. Add the potstickers bottom side down in a single layer, making sure they’re not touching each other. Let them cook 3 to 4 minutes, until the bottoms become golden brown. (Carefully peek at 1 or 2 of them to see how they’re doing.)
• Reduce heat to medium, add 1/4 cup water to pan and cover immediately with the lid (watch out for splattering). Let the potstickers steam for 5 or 6 minutes.
• Meanwhile, make dipping sauce. Our super simple one is equal parts soy sauce and vinegar, about 1/4 cup each, mixed together. That makes enough for 2 servings.
• Transfer potstickers to 2 plates and serve with bowls of dipping sauce.
• Freezing potstickers—and cooking frozen ones. To freeze potstickers, leave them on your hotel pan, cover them with waxed paper and place them in the freezer. Let them freeze for about 2 hours. Now you can transfer them to zippered plastic bags and store in the freezer without worry of them sticking together.
• To cook frozen potstickers, no need to thaw them. Heat oil in a sauté pan as above. Add potstickers and cook for 4 to 5 minutes, until the bottoms are golden. Add the water, cover the pan and cook for 6 to 7 minutes. Done.

Kitchen Notes

Green cabbage? Napa? Both work and both appear in recipes fairly routinely. Their flavors are slightly different, but both get sweeter when cooked. Neither gives these potstickers a pronounced cabbage-y taste. Again, if you make these with green cabbage, sautéing it slightly softens its tougher structure.

Starch choices. You can use potato starch, cornstarch or tapioca starch for these. All do the job, so use what you have on hand. But don’t leave it out—it helps with the structure of the filling.

Booze? No booze? We used dry sherry (again, what we had on hand). You can also use Shaoxing wine. Either adds another subtle layer to the flavor. If you don’t want to add alcohol, just substitute water.

Wrappers. You want round ones here, not the square wonton wrappers (but if that's all you can find, use them and cut them round with a cookie or biscuit cutter). Preferably, you want them to be labeled either potsticker or gyoza wrappers. There should be 40 or so per pack.

Dipping sauce. There are many recipes and versions out there, some including chili oil for a little added heat. For us, potstickers have so many flavors already going for them, we like our simple soy sauce and white vinegar mix.