Japanese Gyoza-Joshua Weissman

They have some great color on the pan side

Time: 2 Hours 35 Minutes

Ingredient Availability: 4/5

Difficulty: 3/5

Potstickers or Gyoza are one of my favorite appetizers at a Japanese restaurant. The crispy edges of the otherwise somewhat chewy wrapper paired with the nugget of flavorful pork is always delicious. Making at home in bulk just sounds somewhat tedious. Let’s see if this recipe from Joshua Weissman’s Website is worth the effort.

Key Ingredients & omissions:

I wasn’t able to find something labeled as potsticker or gyoza wrappers at my grocery store, so I used wonton wrappers instead. I think they worked pretty well, so If you can find those instead, you should be fine. The other thing I wanted to bring up regular the ingredients is that the recipe calls for 2 leaves from a green cabbage, which seems pretty wasteful. Of course, you can make a salad or use the rest of the cabbage fore something else, but calling for two leaves of something like a cabbage is just kind of weird to me. Oh, and I decided not to make the sauce to go with the gyoza.

Tools:

• Skillet

• Sharp Knife

• Grater

Cooking Review:

Prep: 20 minutes

The prep for this recipe included chopping the green onion and cabbage, as well as grating the ginger and garlic.

Prepare Cabbage and Mix Filling: 13 minutes

To prepare the cabbage, I put it in a bowl along with plenty of salt. I mixed it together and let it sit for a few minutes before using my hands to squeeze out as much water as I could before putting it in a bowl with the ground pork. The rest of the ingredients excluding the oil and wrappers were added into that bowl and mixed by hand until everything was evenly distributed.

Fill Wrappers: 53 minutes

This is there the difficulty of this recipe comes in. For one, it’s very tedious to fill and wrap each gyoza. It’s also not easy to get them to look pretty. Initially, I spooned just over 1 tsp of the filling onto the center of a wrapper, brush the edges with water using my finger, then try my best to pleat the edge. The wonton wrappers are square instead of circular, so this may have contributed to the difficulty. After a while, I started to just seal fold up the edges in the easiest way I could instead of trying to pleat them. Having a helper could cut this time significantly. I ended up using all of the wrappers.

Cooking: 57 minutes (4 batches)

To cook the gyoza, I added some oil to evenly coat the bottom of a large skillet and let it heat over medium. I added as many gyoza to the pan as I could without touching and let them cook for 2-3 minutes before adding a quarter cup of water, lowering the heat and covering. I let them cook for 6-7 minutes before removing from the pan. I would highly recommend using a nonstick pan if you have one (the recipe calls for a nonstick pan), as a lot of mine actually stuck to the pan, which took a while to remove before moving on to the next batch. If you don’t have a nonstick, like me, you can still make these, just be careful when removing them so you have very little tearing of the wrapper.

Analysis:

These are delicious, The wrapper has a great contrast of crispy/crunchy and soft/chewy between the face up and face down sides. The flavor is very savory and aromatic thanks to all of the flavorings that go into the filling. There’s plenty of savoriness and a hint of sweetness, which I really like. The vegetables in the filling also provide some crunch to contrast the bite of the pork.  Honestly, if I were served these blindfolded at a restaurant, I would probably put these in the top two I’ve ever had. The only give away is how they look, since I’m not a master gyoza wrapper. Sure, these take a long time to make, but the flavor and texture when you’re done are well worth it. I’m going to give these a 9/10. If there a way to wrap them faster and make them look prettier easier, I wouldn’t have any complaints besides having a whole head of cabbage left over.