5 Dumpling Recipes in Time for Lunar New Year

“They’re sticky, they’re round, they’re shaped like dumplings. So even if chocolate is not a traditional auspicious food, can we just say it is? Can we just say that these dumplings represent prosperity, and family unity, and all the goodness that is chocolate? All right, culture police, come at me! [LAUGHS]:” [UPBEAT MUSIC] “I’m Genevieve Ko, senior editor and columnist at ‘NYT Cooking.’ Welcome to Dumpling Week. It’s our first ever Dumpling Week. To celebrate the Lunar New Year with dumplings, I’m making chocolate sesame dumplings. And these have a sweet mochi wrapper encasing a molten chocolate filling. It’s almost like a truffle. These dumplings were actually inspired by dumplings that my kids loved when they were little. And so this is a grown-up version for them now that they’re a bit older. Thinking about the memories from Lunar New year, not just from my childhood, but from my kids’ childhood — childhoods? For my kids’ childhoods, I thought a lot about and I worried a lot about how far they would go from their culture. And at a certain point, I just realized that actually, the way that they celebrate Lunar New Year and understand it is, of course, going to change, and that one of those ways is, of course, through food. This mixing of cultures is really a part of this celebration. It’s part of the way that we celebrate Lunar New Year now.” [LIGHTHEARTED MUSIC] “The first thing I’m going to do is make the chocolate filling. These are basically really easy chocolate truffles. So you can see here, I’m just going to break up this chocolate bar into pieces. I don’t even bother with chopping. Or you can use chocolate chips, or you can do a mix. Put the chocolate in this metal bowl. Set it over simmering water. And when about 2/3 of the chocolate is melted, then you can take that off the heat. And then stir gently until the rest of the chocolate is melted. And then you’re going to add sweetened condensed milk, toasted sesame oil, and a pinch of sea salt. That’s going to give it a really great sweet, salty balance. And you’re going to stir really gently until it’s smooth again. You don’t want to stir too vigorously because that’s going to cause the chocolate to break. You just want to stir it really gently. And the sweetened condensed milk here gives the chocolate a really lovely creaminess and flavor, but it also helps it stay really stable. So you don’t even have to chill it at this point. All you have to do is scoop it into little balls. They don’t have to be perfect balls, but you do want them to be about the same size. So you want 16 balls of chocolate. I find a melon baller is really great for this. Or you can just pinch off pieces with your hands and roll them into balls. If your kitchen is cold enough, you can just leave it all at room temperature. Otherwise, pop them in the fridge so that they stay stiff. Once that chocolate filling is done, we can go ahead and make the dough. If you have a scale, you definitely want to use that scale to measure flour here, because glutinous rice flour is really fine and very light. I’m going to bring 1/2 a cup of water to a boil in a small saucepan, and as soon as it comes to a boil, I’m turning off the heat and I’m stirring in more toasted sesame oil. This is going to both flavor the dough and actually keep it really tender. Start stirring this just-boiled water right into the flour. Keep stirring, and stirring, and stirring until this mixture forms these little bits that look like a mixture of pebbles, and gravel, and sand. Chopsticks really work best for this, but you can also use a fork. Once I’m at this point, I’m going to see if it’s cool enough now for me to handle. And it is. It’s nice and warm. If anything, oh my God, it feels really nice. It’s almost like a bath. [LAUGHS] Gather this dough, all these pebbles, and just squeeze them together, and form it into a ball. I’m going to let it rest for 5 to 10 minutes, just so that it can come to room temperature. And also, this is going to give the dough a chance to absorb the water that was added. And this water, because it was almost boiling, it actually precooked the flour a bit, which is exactly what we want. It’s been about seven minutes. And I can feel that the dough has had a chance to rest. It’s relaxed a bit. But I can also feel that it’s sticking. It’s sticking to my fingers. So I’m going to knead this dough on a floured surface until it doesn’t stick to my fingers anymore. I sometimes find that I don’t have to add any extra flour — that at this point, the dough is totally perfect. It really just depends on how dry my kitchen is or what the humidity is like in the air. It is pouring rain today, so it’s pretty humid. So I’m just going to knead flour into this dough. So it should almost feel a little sticky, but not actually stick to my fingers. I don’t actually want any flour to be sitting on the surface. So as long as it keeps getting absorbed into the dough, I’m just going to keep adding more. And the dough is now so smooth, and it really feels like playdough. It’s so soft, it’s so tacky, it’s ready to go. And I’m going to roll it into this log and cut it into 16 even pieces by cutting it in half first, cutting these halves in half until I get to 16 equal pieces. So these little dough balls, I definitely want to keep them covered with the same damp towel that I was using earlier for the dough, because if this dough dries out on the outside, it actually develops these weird cracks and dry bits. One of the important things with dumplings is that you always want to pinch out your dough so that the edges are way thinner than the center. You almost have a little, like, fat belly of dough in the middle. And then, as you move out towards the edge, it should get thinner, and thinner, and thinner because you’re pleating all those edges together. By doing it this way, you’re going to end up with an even layer of dough all around. So now that the dough is about a three-inch round, put one of these chocolate balls in the middle and start pleating it. While holding it up, I’m going to just start pleating it on one side and keep going around in a circle, all the way around until I get to the other end. And it’s O.K. that the top is open, because now I’m just going to gather all that pleated dough and pinch it shut. Gather it pretty gently, because this dough is so soft and malleable that if I pinch it really hard, it’s going to get rid of those beautiful pleats. And if I have a little extra dough, I’m going to pull it off. But sometimes it depends on the size of your dough and balls. Sometimes when I don’t feel like going through all the pleating and I just want to get these done really quickly, or if I’m doing it with my kids and they don’t feel like pleating, I just bring the dough up around that chocolate filling. And you get all these natural pleats anyway. I’m just going to do that with all of my dough balls and all of my chocolate balls.” [UPBEAT MUSIC] “I’m setting up with a wok and with bamboo steamers, but you can actually use any steamer you have if you just have an insert, as long as you have a flat bottom that you can line with either parchment paper or a silicone mat like this one that’s perforated. Putting eight on each level, because right is a really lucky, auspicious number for the Lunar New year, or all the time. I don’t actually want the water boiling super hard. I don’t want these to cook too quickly. This dough is quite delicate. And I also don’t want the chocolate to break. And I’m just going to keep checking these dumplings as they steam. And what I’m looking for is for the dough to become translucent. The dough actually is taking on this — it’s almost like a pearlescent quality. I don’t want them to go too long because then they’ll become totally translucent and collapse. These are ready. And while they are still warm and sticky, sprinkle the tops with black and white sesame seeds. I just love the nuttiness of both of them. So these are my chocolate sesame dessert dumplings. All right, so let’s see how our dumpling is. [GIGGLES]: So good and so sticky. Making homemade dumpling wrappers might feel like a project, and it is. But using glutinous rice flour, like, having this be the entry point is so great because it’s so forgiving. It’s wonderful. It’s malleable. Once you get past that sticky stage, it feels like a hug. Like, if dough can feel like a hug, it 100 percent does because it’s so soft, where it’s like sinking into a couch. All right. Thanks so much for joining me for making chocolate sesame dumplings. We are going to have this recipe in all of our Dumpling Week recipes on nytcooking.com.” Happy Lunar New Year! “Yay! They work.” “They do.” “Woo-hoo. Steamers are great. If you don’t have a bamboo steamer, you should get a bamboo steamer.” [LIGHTHEARTED MUSIC]