Deep Fried Dumplings (炸水饺)

Much as I love to have a Air Fryer at home, so as to make my deep-frying food more stress-free in a way. When I'm frazzled, I firmly believe that putting generous amount of oil in the pan is the safest way to go.

Fried dumplings and fried wanton is Max favorite. Infact, it's alot of people's favorite. People eat fried dumplings for breakfast, brunch, lunch, hi-tea, dinner and even supper. There's no restriction here. It can be part of your main course, or finger food. It's up to you.

I made this fried dumplings once about 2 years back. Max had been looking at the fried dumplings picture uploaded on my facebook for several times, complaining to me why I haven't been making this for him. Last night, I did it for him. And I really could see a happy smile on his face.

Before anything else, please pardon me with my lousy photo that makes my fried dumpling looks so unappetizing.

I don't really have a specific ingredient that taste like shop-bought fried dumpling here. I just use whatever I have, and whatever I feel that it would work fine. It's home cooked food anyway. And at home, in my kitchen, I choose to cook what suits me. Yes, I want to please my loved ones, but I can't do that if I'm making my own life hell. Right?

This makes about 12 to 13 dumplings. Good for 2 pax ideally. But Max could finish all of them. Sigh! Go ahead and double up the recipe. 

Ingredients

• a small pack of dumpling wrapper from NTUC. They should have about 12 to 14 sheets in there. 

Fillings:

• 80 g minced pork
• 150 g coarsely chopped prawns. I used about 8 medium prawns.
• 1 shitake mushroom, chopped (should be about 20 grams)
• 2 water chestnut, chopped (should be about 20 grams)
• a handful of carrot, julienned
• a handful of black fungus
• 2 tbsp chopped spring onions
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 2 tsp sesame oil
• 1 tsp shaoxing wine
• 1 tbsp tapioca flour / corn flour
• few dashes of white pepper

If you have some fish paste, it will be much much much better. I didn't buy the fish paste, as I'm only making this in a small batch this time. So, I don't bother to spent a few dollars to get the fish paste, as I knew I only need about 50 grams of it, and keep the rest of it in the fridge until dunno when... 

Method

1. Get all the chopping work done, combine all the fillings ingredients in a bowl, mix them together evenly.
2. Use a tablespoon and scoop some fillings on the wrapper and wrap it up. Flatten the fillings to kinda fill up most of the space. By doing this, your dumpling will get cooked faster.
3. Wet the wrapper edge with water and fold the wrapper into half and seal well. Make sure you expel all the air. 
4. Heat wok with generous amount of oil, deep fry them. Serve with sweet chilli sauce.

The filling that you see here is thin. Thin enough to make sure that the filling are cooked before the side of the wrapper turn charred.

Look at the filling once again... Although the filling is thin and it might not be as generous as what you expect. Because shop-bought fried dumplings is always different from the one people make it at home. For my version, those are real stuffs in there! Fresh prawns, fresh minced meat & the rest of the veggies.



I hope you like it :)