Culinary Hotline - Tina Long

How To Make Sizzling Beef Potstickers

1. Place the beef mince, soy sauce, ginger, rice wine, sugar, salt and egg in a bowl. Using your fingers or a pair of chopsticks, mix in the same direction for 5 minutes or until the ingredients become sticky.
2. Mix in the vegetables, cheese and sesame oil.
3. Chill in the fridge for 30 minutes before using.

Red dough

1. Mix the flour, cornflour and salt together.
2. Add half the beetroot juice and all the oil and mix well. Slowly drizzle the remainder of the liquid into the mixture until it forms a dry dough.
3. Knead the dough for roughly 5 minutes. Don’t worry if it’s looking a little dry and tough at this point.
4. Cover it with a wet cloth and let it rest for 30 minutes.
5. Knead the dough for another 5 minutes. It should be softer now and easier to work with. If it’s still tough and not pliable, then sprinkle a teaspoon of cold water on to it. Knead the water into the dough.
6. Your dough now should be soft and pliable. The surface should be smooth. The firmness of the dough should be like the bottom of your earlobe
7. Dust your dough with extra cornflour. Cut it into 2 portions. Pass each portion through a pasta roller on the thickest setting. Fold up the resulting sheet and pass it through the pasta roller again. Continue passing each sheet through the pasta roller and reduce the thickness setting until it is 2mm thick. Dust with cornflour if it sticks to the roller.
8. Lay out the thin sheets on the counter and use an 8 cm round cookie cutter to cut out circles. They should weigh 10g each.

Assembling your potstickers
Folding your potstickers

1. To prepare, dust a baking tray with cornflour. Have the bowl of filling and another small bowl of water at hand.
2. Place 1 tablespoon of filling in the centre of each wrapper. Use your index fingertip to wet the top half edges of each wrapper to “glue it”.
3. Fold each dumpling wrapper in half over the filling. Pinch it at the top centre to seal it. Now make 3 or 4 pleats
4. On either side, pinching them tightly to seal. Place the folded potsticker on the baking tray.

PRO TIPS: Keep your folded potstickers on the floured tray so that they don’t stick together. You can carry the tray over to your pan or place it in the freezer to save extras for later. Freeze them in the tray until it’s hard before packing them in a Tupperware.

Cooking your potstickers

For cooking:

• 1 cup cold water
• 1 tbsp cornflour
• 1 tsp vegetable oil

For dipping sauce:

• 3 tbsp soya sauce
• 1 tbsp black chiankang vinegar (or balsamic if you don’t have)
• 1 tbsp sesame oil

1. Coat a pan with cooking oil. Turn the stove on to high. PRO TIP: It is important that your pan is non-stick and has a lid – preferably one you can see through.
2. Mix the water, cornflour and cooking oil.
3. When the pan is smoking hot, add your potstickers. Space them out in a single layer.
4. Pour the cornflour mixture into the pan. There should be enough liquid to cover the bases of the potstickers. Immediately put on the lid.
5. Wait for roughly 3 minutes, then take the lid off. Most of the cornflour mixture should have evaporated by this stage – wait a few minutes longer until you see a beautiful golden-brown lace around the potstickers.
6. Position a dinner plate over the pan and quickly flip it upside down.
7. To make the dipping sauce, mix the soy sauce, vinegar and sesame oil with grated ginger and finely chopped spring onion.