Homemade Gyoza and Wontons

To demonstrate my extreme AZN skill, I created a recipe for homemade wontons and gyoza that arguably taste better than my mom's... it's my way of feeling less inadequate when I run into any of my Chinese peers who actually went through Chinese school and bothered to learn some Mandarin.

Ingredients:

2 lbs ground pork (ground chicken can be substituted for a slightly different flavor, but other meats don't work as well)

1 tsp cornstarch

1 small bunch green onions (about 3 or 4 large sprouts)

3 to 5 dry shiitake mushrooms, rehydrated for at least 30 minutes in warm water

1 tbsp minced garlic

1 tsp black pepper

2 tbsp soy sauce

2 tbsp oyster sauce (original Lee Kum Kee is the best)

1-2 tbsp vegetable oil

1 pkg wonton skins (square) OR gyoza skins (round) - it is important that you make the distinction because substituting one for the other can result in EMBARRASSING FAILURE (which I will describe below)

Tools:

1 mixing bowl

1 pan with a lid

1 baking tray

Slice up the soft shiitake mushrooms into itty bitty pieces. Wash the green onions and cut into tiny rounds. Combine all ingredients except for the skins into a large bowl and mix together well with your hands (it will make questionably appealing moist squishy noises). All the ingredients should be evenly distributed through the ground meat mixture. Get a spoon and proceed with one of the following:

- For wontons, use the square skins. Place a small amount of filling (about 1/2 to 1/4 tsp) into the center of the square. Moisten two adjacent edges with a little water, and fold the dry edges across the filling diagonally onto the moistened edges to make a meat-filled triangle. Press edges to seal. You now have an isosceles triangle. Moisten the corners which form the two acute angles with a little water, and bring them together, making a crease in the meat pocket and giving the wonton some 3D shape. Voila, you have a wonton. Repeat, like, 30 or 40 more times until you've used up your filling and you feel like a sweatshop laborer.

- For the gyoza, use the round skins (important! Buy the round skins made for gyoza! They are thicker than the square skins. Do not try to cheat and round the edges off the square ones. They will structurally fail when it comes time to cook them and it will be embarrassing for you and anyone you are trying to impress with your mad AZN skillz). Place a small amount of filling (1/2 to 3/4 tsp) into the center of the circle. Moisten halfway around the circumference of the circle with a little water. Now here comes the secret AZN dumpling step (FOLD FRISBEE HARD - THIS IS CRUCIAL)... starting at one side of the moistened circumference (don't start in the middle, start at one of the ends), fold the circle over, and give the moistened edge a little pleat near the point where you started folding. Press it down against the dry edge. Continue with about 5 or 6 more pleats right next to each other, until you've made yourself a little 3-D crescent meat pocket (the pleated edge will be on the "outer" edge of the crescent, and the smooth edge will be on the "inner" side). Seal any areas along the edge that didn't stick together. Voila, you have a single gyoza. Now repeat this step until all the meat is gone.

TO COOK:

Wontons can be boiled, steamed, or deep fried. Do that until the meat in the center is cooked (about 3 minutes in boiling water if unfrozen, 5-6 minutes if frozen).

Gyoza can be steamed or pan fried. To pan-fry them, place the gyozas flat-side down (pleat side up) in a frying pan with high edges and a few teaspoons of cooking oil. Brown the bottoms until they are nice and crispy (they will stick to the pan and all the insides will fall out if you cheated in the previous step). Then, pour about a 1/4" of water into the hot pan, cover, and turn the heat down and cook the gyoza until most (or all) of the liquid evaporates and the meat in the center is cooked.

TO FREEZE:

You'd think that nobody would need instructions on how to freeze things, but you'd be wrong. I've managed to fuck this up before - much to your benefit, because now I know the right way of doing things and I'm sharing it with you. Uncooked gyoza and wontons freeze really well, and you can just dump them straight into the pot or pan when you're ready to eat them. To freeze them, lay them all out flat on a baking tray dusted with a little flour (so they don't stick), and freeze them until the meat is frozen. Then put them all into a sealed plastic container until you're ready to use them. They keep for several months (after which time, the frozen green onions become freeze-dried and they don't taste as good).