For some Chinese traditional festivals, like Chinese New Year or The Winter Solstice Day, we will have dumplings on our dining table to celebrate. I personally like dumplings so much that I even owned a dumplings machine at home during my stay in Germany. It helped me survive the time when the craving is too big to be ignored. The best dumplings, of course are made by people. If you haven’t heard about Chinese dumplings before you came to China, I suppose you will know them few days after you are here. Dumplings, however, is just a general term for many different variants I want to introduce in this article (there will be a sequel)
Jiǎo Zǐ — 饺子
Guō Tiē — 锅贴
Tāng Bāo — 汤包
Jiaozi is considered as the most popular Dumpling in Chinese families. People in Northern of China would always eat Jiaozi for almost every traditional festivals. It is said, “Nothing tastes better than dumplings, and nothing is more comfortable than lay down”.
Jiaozi is crescent-shaped and bulged with the filling wrapped inside. The skins of Jiaozi need to be thin enough to allow an easy bite, but in the meantime they must have enough consistency to hold the fillings together. No matter which kind of eater you are, a vegetarian, a meat-fever, when it comes to fillings, you will have endless choices. Different meat, sea fruits, eggs, variety of vegetables like cabbages, celeries, spring onions, mixing these ingredients with necessary sauces and spices. The fillings are done.
The making of skin is much more different: mixing the perfectly proportioned water, salt and flour, then kneading, rolling, cutting, etc… Then wrap the fillings into the skin and cooking the dumplings in the water and there you have it. People eat Jiaozi mostly with dip (e.g. vinegar, soy sauce, roasted chillies) together. Enjoy them when they are fresh and steaming! Overnighted Jiaozis could be very disappoiting.
Guotie is similar to Jiaozi, normally smaller, prefer using pork, and contains much more than vegetables, with a hole at the both ends. Instead of cooking, Guotie are fried in a big pan, without turning them over. Normally you will find them in breakfast stores on the side of streets. A bowl of porridge and Guotie together make a beloved combination as a typical Chinese breakfast.
Tangbao has thick but soft skin, round form, and beautiful 32 wrinkle (although always not perfectly made), it is served in the track of bamboo streamers. There is a delicate way to eat Tangbao. At first, you bite a little bit of the skin, filling shows. That is so called “open the window”. Watch out of the heat when fresh shiny soup spreads out. A small note: bite a small opening. If you don’t open the “window” first, but directly open the “door”, it may happen that the whole soup in the belly of Tangbao splashes onto your companies’ faces. Soup is the most important indicator of good Tangbao. Drink the soup, feeling warm and fresh tasty, and then finish eating the rest of Tangbao. Yummy!
There are so many kinds of dumplings in China that we can eat them for the whole year. The variants mentioned above are only a glance of dumplings in China. If you are interested, just walk down an old street with many restaurants and snack bistros. Go with your instinct, enter some of them, and explore your favorite smell and taste. In next article, I will introduce you some more dumplings.
