A trip to the nearest Asian market inspired this original recipe. (photo by Jenn Harris)

A plate of fresh, steaming hot, homemade dumplings is one of the best dishes to bring to a dinner party. I discovered this when I brought a plate of pork dumplings to an Asian themed potluck at a friend's apartment last week.

While strolling through the Hannam Korean market on Olympic in K town, I was looking for inspiration.  As always, I'm on a budget, but I still needed to make a dish that would feed six people and elicit praise.  I went through some possibilities: chow mein, egg rolls, fried rice? Everything just seemed boring and a little too greasy.

When I came across some gyoza wrappers I thought, 'why not make my own dumplings?' I love dumplings! I make at least one trip every two weeks to Din Tai Fung Dumpling House in Arcadia to get fresh dumplings. Their pork dumplings are juicy and their ginger vinegar dipping sauce is unrivaled. I'd never made dumplings from scratch before but told myself that if the ingredients were reasonable enough I'd do it.

I purchased 1lb of pork for $2.99, a package of dumpling wrappers for $1.50, a bunch of green onions for $.99, a small piece of fresh ginger for $1.25 and a bulb of garlic for $.99. For a grand total of $7.72 I had all the ingredients I needed to make atleast 40 dumplings (assuming you already have soy sauce and some sort of chili sauce and vinegar in your cupboard at home).

Since I wasn't going off of any formal recipe I thought about all the flavors that go into great dumplings. The green onion adds a nice bite, the garlic is a no brainer and the fresh ginger is a little bitter and sweet at the same time. Also I wanted to copy the dipping sauce at Din Tai Fung and thought it would be good to have a little bit of that fresh ginger taste inside the dumplings as well.

It was a little labor intensive to fill and seal each dumpling but the time spent (about 1 hour) was well worth the trouble. I served them with my own version of a spicy ginger dipping sauce with just a touch of sugar. My friends were thoroughly impressed and said the dumplings were amazing. I was proud to say I had made them from scratch and had to agree with my friends; they really were amazing.

Pork Dumplings

Makes around 40 dumplings and Serves 6-10

Ingredients:

Dumplings:

1lb ground pork

1pkg dumpling wrappers (gyoza wrappers will work too, just buy the thicker rather than the thinner ones)

5 stalks of green onion, finely chopped

1.5 tbsp fresh, grated ginger

3-4 large cloves of grated garlic

Dipping Sauce:

1/4 cup soy sauce

1.5 tsp of freshly grated ginger

2 drops of chili sauce (add more or less depending on your preference)

1 tsp sugar

2 tsp rice wine vinegar (or black vinegar or whatever vinegar you already have at home)

Directions:

In a large mixing bowl, mix the green onion, garlic and ginger until thoroughly combined.

To form a dumpling, take a dumpling wrapper and wet the edges with some water. Take about 1 to 1.5 tsp of filling and place it in the center of the wrapper. Fold the wrapper in half and seal the edges. You want to make sure you don't overstuff the dumplings. Then take a fork and press the edges together to ensure that the filling is secure and also make a pretty design. Repeat for each dumpling.

Heat a nonstick pan or a skillet coated well with oil to medium/high heat. Place a small amount of oil in the pan and wait for it to heat up. Once heated, place the dumplings in the pan (be careful not to crowd the pan) and brown on each side for one to two minutes. When the dumplings are brown on both sides pour a couple tables spoons of water into the hot pan, cover with a top and put the heat on low. Let the dumplings steam for 10 minutes. After ten minutes the filling should be cooked thoroughly and the outside of the noodle should be tender and still a little crispy.

To make the sauce, mix all of the dipping sauce ingredients together and serve.