Gluten-Free Pot Stickers

We made pot stickers. They were yummy! (A lot of work, but very yummy.)

The wrapper recipe came from Asian Dumpling Tips, and originally used bean flour, which sounds like it worked really well. I, however, don’t do bean flour. (Ick.) So I tried my usual rice flour blend. The dough was sticky, but not too hard to work with, provided I kept a lot of flour on the board. The main issue was keeping them from drying out, which I solved with a wet paper towel and a glass of water handy for dipping fingers. As for the time factor – definitely start these before you get hungry. They take a while to roll out as well as cook. These were crispy the first time around, and reheated well in the microwave, softening slightly. We’ll definitely try these again, with different fillings and dipping sauces.

Gluten-Free Pot Stickers

Wrappers

10 ounces (2 cups) rice flour mix

2 teaspoons xanthan gum

pinch of salt (optional)

3/4 cup hot water

Combine the flour, salt and xanthan gum in a bowl, make a well in the center, and then stir in the hot water. Use your hands to work the dough together into a relatively smooth ball. Cover with plastic wrap and let it sit for at least 20 minutes to rest and soften.

Form 24 balls and roll out on a well floured board, making your wrappers each between 3 1/4 and 3 1/2 inches wide. I kept a wet paper towel over the waiting dough to keep it moist while rolling the wrappers. The author of the original recipe used a tortilla press, which would significantly speed up the process.

Filling

1 lb ground pork

1/2 cup (or so) of finely chopped napa cabbage

1 teaspoon soy sauce or substitute

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup chopped scallions

Mix well. Put a generous 1 tablespoon of the filling (or 1/24th of it) in the center of a wrapper and close it up into a half moon, sealing well. We needed to wet a finger with water and run it around the inside edge of the dough circle, then pressed it to seal. Set each dumpling on its fold and scrunch up the edge to make a three sided dumpling. The goal is to get the dumpling to sit up.

Pan-fry the dumplings on the two large sides, then stand up to get the third side. We fried ours in 4 batches, and kept them warm in a toaster oven while the rest were cooking.

Serve with soy sauce for dipping.