Friday, January 7, 2011

Day 80 - Dumplings Galore

Dumplings.

A lot of people have a big BIG love for them.  My son happens to be one of them.  We’ve made gluten free pot stickers before, and that was my plan for today.  More gluten free pot stickers (which are pretty good).  But I got a little ambitious, decided to change it up, and went with steamed dumplings instead.


I come from California, home of dim sum (2nd home, actually, after, you know, China). Dim sum is Chinese breakfast and while I’ve heard they have some good places in Dallas, I’ve yet to venture that way, and so I decided to try to make some yummy dim sum-like dumplings on my own (with the kids).
They were surprisingly easy.  What got complicated was that we decided to make 5 kinds.  That’s what happens when you have a 10 year old vegetarian, a 13 year old child with celiac disease, some meat-eaters, and a type 1 diabetic all in one household.  You have to meet all needs.
So nothing is particularly easy in our kitchen.  But we’ve done pretty well, and our dumpling extravaganza was a major success.

The great thing about this dumpling adventure was discovering that the gluten free dumplings are gluten free by nature.  The wrappers are JUST like the ones at the dim sum restaurant and that’s just how they are--made of white rice flour and tapioca starch.


We made gluten free pork and gluten free shrimp dumplings.  We made pork dumplings and shrimp dumplings with wonton wrappers.  And we made vegetarian dumplings with bean sprouts, scallions, nappa cabbage, and ginger.

The recipes were from this awesome website all about... DUMPLINGS!

So, if you have an hour... or three... try your own dumpling extravaganza.  You won’t be sorry.

6 comments:

  1. Dumpling love! I have a confession ... I've never had a dumpling, gluten free or not. You've given me lots of options to try though!

    Thanks! Happy 2011 your family!
    Shirley

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  2. When I was little I was called dumplin'. Now that I'm big I'm gonna fix 'em and eat 'em. ;-)

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  3. I've never had dumplings before but my husband loves them from his time in China. I am curious, which GF dumpling wrapper recipe did you use?

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  4. http://www.asiandumplingtips.com/2009/08/slanted-door-hue-rice-dumplings-recipe-banh-xep-chay.html#more

    Beyond rice... the recipe we used was from the link above. It was fantastic! Loved, loved, loved it. We made the veggie filling, too.

    Are their ready made gf wrappers? I've not seen those. but these were so excellent, we'll make them again... maybe tonight. I'm feeling a craving coming on!

    We used waxed paper and our (cheap) corn tortilla press and it worked beautifully.

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  5. You won't be sorry, Sharon Marie!

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  6. OMG, Shirley, you don't know what you are missing. These are mouth-watering delicious!

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