Chinese New Year Potstickers

To celebrate Chinese New Year, we made potstickers! Since I have never, ever made potstickers on my own, I googled "potstickers for kids" and found a great recipe from a website called superhealthykids.com. The recipe uses tons of great fresh vegetables and substitutes turkey (instead of pork)...so I was looking forward to trying it with the kids.

We used a box grater, a microplane AND a food processor to finely mince cabbage, water chestnuts, mushrooms, carrots, green onions and fresh ginger. Then, we added ground turkey, soy sauce, rice vinegar and sesame oil to the mixture.

Everyone made two potstickers each by "painting" on a slurry of cornstarch and water, then pinching the sides together.

These are waiting to be steamed!

A stock pot with a steamer basket worked great since we didn't have a bamboo steamer.

We even made our own dipping sauce with fresh squeezed orange and lime juices, soy sauce and sugar!

Yum!!! (These potstickers were also wildly popular with the teachers and staff!)

Quote of the day: "When my dad was younger, he used to order the pu pu platter at Chinese restaurants." Oh my.

Ingredients:

12 ounces cabbage, chopped

2 carrots, finely shredded

2 large mushrooms, diced

5-6 whole water chestnuts, diced

1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger

1/4 cup minced green onions

1 pound ground turkey

1 1/2 tablespoons soy sauce

1 tablespoon Chinese rice wine

2 teaspoons sesame oil

1 package round dumpling wrappers (gyoza/potsticker wrappers)

Slurry:

1 tablespoon cornstarch + 1/2 cup water

Sauce:

Juice of 1 orange

Juice of 1 lime

3-4 Tbsp low-sodium soy sauce

1 tsp sugar

Instructions:

Place cabbage, carrots, mushrooms, water chestnuts, green onion and ginger in a food processor and process until everything is finely minced. Remove and place in a large bowl.

Add turkey, soy sauce, rice wine and sesame oil. Mix together (your hands work well)

Mix together the slurry. Take one wrapper, spoon 1 tablespoon of the filling mixture onto the middle of the wrapper. Dip one finger into the slurry and “paint” the edges of the potsticker wrapper. Bring up the bottom side of the wrapper, fold in half, encasing all of the filling. Pinch the edges. Place on a tray, cover loosely with plastic wrap and repeat with rest of dumplings. Make sure that the dumplings do not touch each other.

To cook, you can use 2 methods:

1) Fill a steamer pot with 1-2 inches of water and bring to a boil. Place the potstickers in a steamer basket and cook for 5 minutes until the filling is cooked through. Remove and let cool a bit before serving.

2) Half-fill a large pot with water and bring to boil. When boiling, gently slide in 1/3 of the potstickers. When water returns to a boil, turn heat to a simmer and gently cook for 6-8 minutes. Remove with slotted spoon and repeat with remaining dumplings.

Sauce:

Mix ingredients together and bring to a boil. Remove from heat, and pour into a serving dish.