I’ve been craving pot stickers since we got out for winter break. Something about the slightly sweet taste of the pot sticker filling with the salty sauce had me digging through various recipes to come up with one to cook once we got tired of the New Years ham.

Pot Stickers:

• Pot sticker wrappers (found in the frozen section!)
• 1 lb of ground pork
• 3 scallions: white and greens, finely chopped
• 1 carrot
• ½ cabbage (salted and squeezed to get water out)
• Ginger (to taste)
• 3 tbsp sweet chili sauce
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1 egg’
• 3 tbsp vegetable oil
• ½ cup water

When you start prepping, pull your wrappers out of the freezer and put them in some lukewarm water so that they can defrost. Make sure they are still sealed. Frozen pot sticker wrappers don’t peel well. I chopped up the cabbage using my food processor, which shredded it to tiny pieces which is exactly what I wanted. After it was shredded, into a bowl it went with a good bit of salt and a paper towel. The goal here was to squeeze as much water out of my cabbage as I could before I wrapped it up. I didn’t want my pot sticker falling apart. The carrot also went into the food processor, because why not.

In a medium sized mixing bowl I mixed the pork, scallions, carrot, cabbage, ginger (I used fresh, and diced up maybe 2 teaspoons), salt and pepper, the soy sauce, and sweet chili sauce. I mixed these by hand so that everything was evenly distributed. There were periodic stops to go to the sink and run my hands under warm water because they were so cold.

On my large cutting board, I laid out 12 pot sticker wrappers at a time. Put a teaspoon or so of your filling into the center. You’ll want to experiment a little here, I like my pot stickers full so I used more filling than a teaspoon, but when folded the more filling there was the more difficult it was to seal properly. The filling will shrink when cooking, leaving a little space inside the pot sticker. Once I got the filling into the wrappers, I beat an egg into a small bowl. Using my fingers, I took some of the egg wash all the way around the wrapper to seal it. I folded the wrapper and sealed it all the way around first, then went back and did a fold in the middle and one on each side.

To cook, heat your oil so that it’s nice and hot. Lay your pot stickers down on one side and cook until lightly brown. We used a cast iron pan that held 9 at a time. Once they’re brown, flip them over and put in your ½ cup water. Quickly cover and steam for 5-7 minutes. Be really careful, that hot oil pops like crazy! Make sure you’re not cooking on too high a heat or you will run out of water.

I froze the rest of my pot stickers to use the next time a pot sticker craving comes up. I laid them on piece of parchment paper on a cookie sheet in the freezer. They stayed there for 2 hours or so until frozen, and then I bagged them up.  Add another couple of minutes to your steaming for frozen ones. You can also mess with the vegetables in the filling to suit your tastes.

Dipping Sauce

• ½ cup rice vinegar
• ¼ cup soy sauce
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 tsp ginger
• ½ tsp red pepper flakes

Adjust the garlic and ginger to your taste. I used more ginger because I love the flavor, and a few more red pepper flakes because my husband likes things spicy. Combine all ingredients into a bowl and whisk together. Let it sit for a little before eating, so that the flavors combine. Dip pot stickers to your heart’s content. This is totally fine to store in the fridge for a little bit.

Fried Rice:

• 3 cups of white rice (day old is better!)
• 1 white onion
• 1 cup peas and carrots (I used frozen)
• 2 eggs
• 2 cloves of garlic
• ⅓ cup soy sauce
• 3 tbsp sesame oil

Dice your onion and garlic while your sesame oil heats a little in your pan. Saute the onion, garlic, peas, and carrots until the onions are translucent. Add in your eggs, I made sure I cracked and scrambled them before I put them into the pan to ensure I didn’t get big chunks of yolk.

Once your eggs are scrambled, in goes your white rice. I have it on good authority day old rice is better, although for this particular time I used day old rice and hour old rice. Break up those big chunks of white rice. We found that a potato masher is very useful for this! Douce the soy sauce in there and mix it up until the rice is coated. Continue to cook until rice is warm and the sauce is soaked in. Feel free to add proteins like chicken, shrimp, whatever floats your boat. I chose not to use a protein this time because we were getting pork in the pot stickers.

On to the wine…

This week’s wine was a Beaujolais. I can’t even begin to pronounce it, so don’t ask. It is a red wine with a French grape. The grape has a thin skin and is low in tannins, which is great if you’re anything like me and strong reds are an instant headache. Our local wine stores are terrible for anything that’s not local, so I had to order online. Thank you California, for allowing your people to order wine online. 

We really enjoyed this wine! When poured, I was pretty skeptical because of the color. It was a deep, almost purple red. Not usually a good sign. I was pleasantly surprised when I took the first sip. The wine was very smooth and fruity, leaving no sense of dryness in its wake. Overall, it was very light and easy to drink over the course of a couple of “Chopped” episodes. In the future, I would pair this with a nice meat and cheese tray or a light pasta. It would have also gone really well with the above pot stickers, but we didn’t think about that when we ate dinner.  10/10 would drink again. 0/10 on the headache scale, yay for low tannin!

P.S. Sorry not sorry that the picture is an empty bottle. Just imagine it full of red wine.