5 New Year’s Eve Dumpling Recipes

“They are sticky, round, dumpling-shaped. So while chocolate isn’t a traditional dessert, can we just say it is? Can we just say that these dumplings represent prosperity, and family unity, and all the goodness that comes with chocolate? Well, culture police, come to me! (Laughs):” (UPBEAT MUSIC) “I’m Genevieve Ko, senior editor and reporter at ‘NYT Cooking.’ Welcome to Dumpling Week. It’s first dumpling week. To celebrate the New Year with dumplings, I’m making chocolate sesame dumplings. And there’s a sweet mochi wrapper covered in melted chocolate. It’s almost like a truffle. These dumplings are from the dumplings that my kids loved when they were little. And that’s a big version of them now that they’re older. Thinking of the memories of the Lunar New Year, not only from my childhood, but from my children’s childhood — my childhood? For my children’s childhood, I thought a lot and worried a lot about how far away their culture was. And at some point I realized that in fact, the way they celebrate the Lunar New Year and understand it will obviously change, and one of those ways is, of course , through food. This cultural fusion is truly part of this celebration. This is part of the way we celebrate the New Year.” (LIGHT MUSIC) “The first thing I’m going to do is fill with chocolate. These are really easy chocolate truffles. So you will see here that I will break this chocolate down a little. I don’t even bother cutting. You can either use chocolate, or you can mix it up. Place the chocolate in a metal bowl. Place over boiling water. And when 2/3 of the chocolate has melted, you can remove it from the heat. And stir gently until the rest of the chocolate melts. And then add sweetened condensed milk, ground sesame oil, and a pinch of sea salt. This will give it a really nice sweet and salty balance. And you gently wash it until it’s soft again. You don’t want to stir too hard because the chocolate might break. You just want to mess it up gently. And the sweetened condensed milk here gives the chocolate a creaminess and a very pleasant taste, but it helps it to remain very stable. So you don’t even need to cool down right now. All you have to do is roll it into a small ball. They don’t have to be perfect balls, but you want them to be the same size. So you need 16 chocolate balls. I find that melon ballers are really good at this. Or you can pinch the pieces with your hands and roll them into a ball. If your kitchen is very cold, you can just leave it at room temperature. If not, put them in the fridge to stay firm. Once this chocolate filling is done, we can move on and make the dough. If you have a scale, you’ll definitely want to use that scale to measure flour here, because glutinous flour is very fine and very light. I bring 1/2 cup of water to a boil in a small pot, and as soon as it boils, turn off the heat and pour in the ground sesame oil. This will both prick the dough and make it soft. Start this freshly boiled water in the flour. Keep stirring, and stirring, and stirring until the little bits form a mixture of gravel, sand, and sand. Chopsticks work best for this, but you can also use a fork. When I get to that point, I’ll see if it’s cold enough for me to handle. And it is. Nice and warm. If anything, oh my god, it’s so wonderful. Almost like a bath. Gather this dough, all these pebbles, just crush them, then make them into balls. I let it sit for 5 to 10 minutes, to bring it up to temperature. Also, this will give the dough a chance to absorb the water that has been added. And this water, because it was almost boiling, actually cooked the flour a little bit, which is what we really want. It was about seven minutes ago. And I realized that the dough had a chance to rest. It’s quite peaceful. But I also feel that it is stuck. It sticks to my fingers. So I rub this dough on flour until it no longer sticks to my fingers. Sometimes I find that I don’t need to add more flour – but right now the dough is absolutely perfect. My kitchen really depends on how dry or humid the air is. It rained today, so it was very wet. So I will knead flour with this dough. So it should be almost sticky, but not really sticky to my fingers. I don’t want any flour to sit on the surface. So if it is still in the dough, I will add more. And the dough is now very smooth, and very much like playdough. It is very soft, smooth, ready to go. And I’m going to roll it in this log and cut it into 16 pieces together in half first, cut those pieces until they’re 16 equal. So these little balls of dough, I really want to keep the dough on the wet towel that I used earlier, because if this dough is dry on the outside, it really creates these weird cracks and dry crumbs. One of the important things about dumplings is that you want to roll out your dough so that the edges are thinner than the middle. You almost have a little fat belly in the middle of the dough. And then, as you move toward the edges, it should get lighter and lighter and lighter because you’re bringing all these edges together. By doing this, you will end up with a layer of dough all around. So, now that the dough is about three inches, place one of those chocolate balls in the middle and start rolling it. While holding it, I start gluing it to one side and keep going round and round, until I reach the end. And it doesn’t matter that the top is open, because now I’m going to collect all the glued dough and close it. Gather gently, this dough is so soft and pliable that if I press hard, those beautiful pleats will come out. And if I have a little extra dough, I remove it. But sometimes it depends on the size of your dough and your balls. Sometimes when I don’t want to do all the pleating and want to do it really fast, or if I’m doing it with my kids and they don’t want to pleat, I carry the dough around. that chocolate filling. And yet you get all those natural pleats. I will do this with all the dough balls and all the chocolate balls. (UPBEAT MUSIC) “I set up a wok and a bamboo steamer, but you can use whatever steamer you have as long as you have an insert, as long as you have a flat bottom that you can put parchment paper on. or a silicone mat like this one with a brush. Place eight on each level, because the right is a very lucky number for the Lunar New Year, or at any time. I really don’t like boiling hot water. I don’t want these to cook too quickly. This dough is quite fragile. And I don’t want the chocolate to break either. And I’ll keep looking at those dumplings as they blow. And what I’m looking for is to make the dough transparent. The dough really takes it – it almost has a pearly quality. I don’t want them to be too long because they will become completely transparent and collapse. They are ready. And while they are hot and sticky, sprinkle the top with black and white sesame seeds. I just love how cute they both are. So here are the chocolate sesame dessert dumplings. Well, let’s see how their dumplings are. (Screaming): Very nice and sticky. Making homemade food wraps can seem like a project, and it is. But the use of wheat flour, as it is the entry point, is very good because it is forgiving. It’s wonderful. It is easily digestible. Once you get past that sticky stage, it’s like a hug. Like, if the dough feels like a hug, it’s 100 percent because it’s very soft, which is like sinking into a bed. That’s good. Thank you so much for joining me in making chocolate sesame dumplings. We’ll have this recipe for our Dumpling Week interview on nytcooking.com. Happy New Year! “Yay! They’re working.” “They do.” “Wo-ho. Steamers are good. If you don’t have a bamboo steamer, you should get a bamboo steamer.” (LIGHT MUSIC)