Vegan Tofu Yam Veggie Dumplings

One of my most recent obsessions has been making dumplings. I make it every chance I get, and I also get requests to make them from my mom every other week. I make them pretty often, but no two times are alike, probably because what I usually do is go foraging in the fridge for any ingredients I can find plus the essential onion, cilantro, garlic and ginger and chop everything up small and put it all together in a dumpling wrap! There was this one time when I was over at my friend’s place and there was nothing vegetarian for dinner, so I looked around in the veggie crisper and found some red cabbage, some wilting carrots, onion, red bell pepper, a couple eggs, zucchini, corn… (I think that’s it) and I put it all together. Cooked down the cabbage first, and stuffed it in dumpling wrappers and it was pretty good! A little wet, because there was no meat or anything else to soak up the moisture…but I found a solution for that in this recipe. T.V.P or Textured Vegetable Protein is a dried soybean byproduct of making soybean oil. It's the secret to soaking up all the moisture that is caused by all these vegetables, and keeps the mixture from being really watery. Add as much or as little as you like. It's a really great source of protein, and is vegan!

This is a vegan version that I was experimenting with, and added shredded yams! I have never made vegan ones before, because they usually need egg in there as a binder, but even without it, the filling stayed together pretty well, and they were very tasty (I pan fried up a few to taste them before the big event, Co.ERASGA Gala) My mom was helping me put the dumplings together, as we had to pump out a couple hundred of these and oh MAN she’s fast! I’ll be on one package, and she’s on the second! I guess she has a few years on me, so she’d better be fast, but really? I have never seen dumplings assembled quite like that. She was joking that if she hadn’t helped me, I would still be up at 3am making these, and I agree, I probably would be.

So the trick to making dumplings is patience. You need to cut everything up as small as you can, and that can be a little time consuming, and you also need to assemble them one by one. What I used to do was have friends over after I have the filling made up, and sit around the table and we would all assemble them together. It would always make for great conversation, we’d all have fun because inevitably, some of them would turn out a little funny looking…but regardless of what they look like, as long as the filling isn’t exploding out of them, they all taste great! I had two guy friends over once for dumplings, and one of them said, “I feel like a middle aged woman (ah-joom-mah (in Korean)) sitting around a table and gossiping about the neighbourhood while making these dumplings”. I couldn’t help but burst out laughing, because it was SO true! Fun nonetheless…

For all intents and purposes, I had to make 2 hundred dumplings, with 6 packages of Shanghai style Dumpling wrappers, but you probably aren’t going to be making that many. So, I have scaled down the recipe so that you can make it at home and it will yield the same results. You can also put in as much or as little ingredients as you want, depending on what you feel like in them.

I also have cabbage in the picture, and sure you can put them in, but I didn’t feel like it, so they never ended up going in the dumplings.
Ingredients:

• 1 Onion, diced very small (not minced)
• 5 White Mushrooms, diced very small
• 1 Pkg, Extra Firm Organic Tofu, diced very small (get the drift?)
• 1 fresh Corn, kernels cut off
• 1/2 to 1 Zucchini, diced very small
• 1 Medium sized Yam, grated
• 2-3 Carrots, grated
• 1 small bunch Chinese Chives (flat leafed, looks like grass, but tastes like onion)
• 1” Garlic, minced
• 3-4 Cloves Garlic, minced
• Small Handful (1/2 Cup) of Cilantro, chopped
• 1 Tbsp Black Pepper
• Dash of Cayenne pepper
• 1/2 cup Soy Sauce (not Chinese dark soy sauce, but the same one you’d use for Sushi- Kikkoman)
• 1/2 cup Fine Textured Vegetable Protein flakes (T.V.P)
• 2 pkg of Round Dumpling Wrappers (I use Double Happiness Foods, Shanghai Style- they come two pkg in one)

Note: You need a cheese cloth to strain out the moisture from the tofu.

1. Cut everything as small as you can. Start off with the tofu. Cut it into as small cubes as possible, 1/8” of an inch. Slice it with the edge surface (smaller side) down, into thin slices of tofu. Stack them all up again, to have the largest surface area down, then slice them to make them long thin strips of tofu, then cut perpendicular to make little cubes. (hopefully the pictures help)

2. Take a cheese cloth and drape it over a colander in the sink, and put all the tofu into the cheese cloth, gather up all the edges and wring it out to get all the moisture out of the tofu.

3. Put it all in a bowl (in my case… a tub)

4. Cut the ends off the carrots, and shred it using a cheese grater into the bowl

5. Finely dice the onion. Slice the onion half thinly, but not cutting all the way through. Slice it up the other direction, then cut it in to chunks.

6. Chop up the mushroom.

7. De-husk the corn, then cut the kernels off. Give it all a good stir.

8. Mince the garlic. Follow the recipe, you’re not cutting up as many as me. The reason you chop it up and mince it instead of putting it through a garlic press, is that you want to keep moisture out of the mix as much as possible. When you put garlic through a garlic press, it presses all the water out of the garlic, making the mix very runny and harder to make the dumpling.

  
9. Mince the ginger.

10. Chop up the zucchini as small as you can (like the tofu)

11. Chinese Chives, chop them up! Cut the stalky part off the bottom, the cut the whole thing in half, and double up, then chop. Give the mixture a stir.

12. Cut the ends off the yams, peel them, cut them down to size, then grate them using the same grater for the carrots.

13. Wash and spin the cilantro, and chop it up fine, but not too fine…

14. That’s it! You’re done chopping! Add pepper, soy sauce, T.V.P, Cayenne and mix it all up!
 
15. Dumpling Wrappers. Open it. Get out a bowl of water, and a heavily floured baking sheet to put the finished dumplings on.

16. To assemble: Hold one dumpling sheet in your non-dominant hand, and wet the edge with water. Add a teaspoon of the filling into the center. Don’t add too much, or it will be really hard to close it and the dumpling wrapper will most likely rip. This is the most difficult part, Seal the dumpling from one end to the other end, crimping only one side of the dumpling, but leaving the other side flat. I’m doing this one with the crimped side facing the camera so you can see, but it’s generally done with the crimped side facing away from you. It’s much easier and faster to do once you get the hang of it. Yay! one down, 200 more to go! (for you, the recipe probably makes around 50 dumplings, more or less)

 
17. Need another look at how it’s done the proper way? The crimped side is away from the camera, make sure all the edges are sealed or they will explode when you cook them. Crimp with your left hand, seal with your right all the way along the dumpling. Do a final seal all around to make sure it’s closed shut.
     

We made a LOT of dumplings. This tray X 4. Left: My tray Right: Mom's tray...

How the station is set up. So you have your heavily floured, parchment paper lined baking sheet (you don’t want these buggers to stick to the pan, or stick together) Scissors for cutting open the packages, teaspoons for adding filling, bowl of water to wet the edges, and a chair and a long stretch of time where either you can chat with your friends, while you’re making them, or in my case, try to compete with your mother to see who’s faster. (She won by a long shot).

Speedy Gonzales at work.

So, in the end you can pan fry them in a little bit of vegetable oil in a hot non-stick pan, add the dumplings, add 1/4 cup of water, and put the lid on to steam them a bit, and once the water dissipates, take the lid off and continue to fry them until at least one side is golden. Or, you can steam them in a double boiler, or in a bamboo steamer, if you don't want all the oil. Healthier steamed too...

Important Note:  A non-stick pan whether Teflon or ceramic is CRUCIAL, or else they will stick like glue to the pan, causing them to rip and no body’s happy after all this hard work. Make sure you use a plastic spatula (or chopsticks), so you don’t rip them as you’re flipping it, and don’t crowd the pan or else they will stick to each other. Yeah, it’s finicky, but it’s a GREAT reward.

Because I'm making so many of these, what I'm doing is freezing all of them in the trays, then bagging them up once they're frozen, and on the day of the Co.ERASGA gala, I am going to drizzle them (while still frozen) with a little vegetable oil and sesame oil and baking them in batches in the oven. They will have a great golden brown finish on them, they'll be crispy on the outside, juicy on the inside and because they're vegan, great for the dancers and I don't need to worry about them being eaten cold or sitting out during the event.

Dip them in a mixture of 1/2 soy sauce, 1/2 white vinegar, one teaspoon of sesame oil and Korean red chilli flakes, Or- Balsamic Vinegar and hot chilli sauce will work too. Or Sriracha and soy sauce.

Enjoying the fruits of her labour.

Mmmmm…vegan dumplings never tasted so good!