“Perfect Potstickers”
On Saturday, I made potstickers, a la Alton Brown. The recipe, complete with pictures is behind the cut.
First, we make the filling.
Start with 2 Tbs. finely chopped red peppers
Add 1/4 cup finely chopped scallions. (I admit - I don’t really cook, so I had to look up which part you should use. Both are edible, and I used both.)
Liquids: 2 teaspoons each of ketchup and Worcestershire (I hate that word!) sauce, and 1 teaspoon of mustard. The recipe calls for yellow mustard, but I didn’t have any, so I used Dijon. Also, 1 lightly beaten egg.
Spices: 1 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, and 1/4 teaspoon cayenne.
Sweet: 1 tablespoon light brown sugar.
Meat: 1/2 pound ground pork.
Mix all of those things together, and your filling is done!
Now, it’s time to make the potstickers themselves. This ends up being an awful lot of work, and it makes a lot of potstickers. Way more fun if you’re working with a friend. I probably won’t make this again just for myself, but maybe with a friend or for a party.
You need wonton wrappers. I searched the store for them, and couldn’t find them (though I’ve seen them before elsewhere), so I got some egg roll wrappers instead. They worked, but I had to cut them into quarters first.
Place a generous teaspoon of filling into the center of each wrapper. Wet two of the edges with water, and fold the wrapper over and seal. Mostly, I just made little triangles, but towards the end I was folding the edges in more. (You’ll see in the next picture.)
Once I had 8 ready, I put them into a pan that had been heated to medium-high and brushed lightly with oil — absolutely not non-stick! You can’t have potstickers without the stick!
Let them cook without touching them for 2 minutes. This lets them get the proper stick-age. After the two minutes, pour 1/3 cup chicken stock into the pan, cover, and reduce heat to low. Careful. Pouring the stock into the hot pan will create a lot of steam, and can easily burn you. Trust me on this one.
Let those steam themselves for another two minutes to ensure that you’ve fully cooked your filling. At the end of those two minutes though, they’re done!
Between batches, you want to clean your pan ever so slightly by deglazing it with some water. You can keep your potstickers in a warm oven while you finish preparing and cooking the rest of them. This can take awhile. But, at the end of the day, you have a lot of tasty-looking potstickers!
They made for a tasty dinner. I was quite pleased with how they turned out (though this last batch isn’t as pretty - they stuck themselves to the pan more than the previous batches, so they got a bit mangled when I put them on my plate). They were delicious, although I was a bit surprised by the spice. It’s not overwhelmingly spicy, but if you’re not a spice fan, you might want to adjust some things to temper it down a bit.
