Hello everybody! We recently celebrated a Korean holiday called Chuseok. This holiday is a celebration of harvest. Traditional foods enjoyed on this holiday are ricecake dumpling soup and a type of rice cake called songpyeon. For this entry, we decided to make kimchi mandoo (kimchi dumplings). We used these dumplings to make our ricecake dumpling soup. The beauty of dumplings are that you can fry them, boil them, or even steam them! Make a lot of it and freeze the ones you don’t eat right away so you can enjoy them later! 
What You Need:
- 1 lb of ground beef *you can also do 1 lb of pork or even half and half
- 2 eggs
- 5-10 garlic pieces minced
- 1 cup kimchi (you can use more if you want!)
- 1 package of dumpling wraps
- 1 cup of bean sprouts (roughly chopped)
- 5-10 green onion (diced)
- 1/2 cup (or half a package) of extra firm tofu
- sesame oil
- cooking wine (we used soju)
- salt and pepper
- sesame seeds (optional)
What to Do:
In a large mixing bowl, add the meat, minced garlic, 1 tablespoon of pepper and salt, and 1 tablespoon of sesame oil, and 1/4 cup of cooking wine. Mix the ingredients together.
The next step is to get the kimchi ready. If you have a cheesecloth, this will work very well. If not, do not worry, plain paper towel will work just as well. We have to try to get all the moisture out from the kimchi. If not, the mixture will have too much water. Gather all the kimchi in paper towel and squeeze!
Next, dice the kimchi into small pieces. We used kitchen scissors.
Squeeze out the water from the bean sprouts. Add in the kimchi, green onions and bean sprouts to the mixture and stir. We found it easier to stir with our hands rather than a spoon.
We now have to mix in the tofu. Make sure to crumble it into the mixture. It is important to use tofu that does not have too much water content. We do not want too much water into our mixture or else when we make our dumplings, the dumpling will become very soggy. As the tofu level goes from silk –firm–extra firm, the moisture level of the tofu decreases. Firm or extra firm will work best. You can also try squeezing out the extra moisture from the tofu.
Add in the tofu and 2 egg yolks. Save the egg whites!
Lastly, add in a good sprinkle of sesame seeds if you want. Mix!
Now the mixture is ready to be stuffed. Use the egg white as a ‘glue’ to close the edges of the dumplings.
There is no right way to fold the dumplings. This way of making the dumplings fan like is commonly seen. It took many tries before we got the hang of it…sort of!
If you pinch the bottom of the dumplings and bring it together, you will also make another dumpling shape commonly seen in dumpling soups and as well as in steamed dumplings.
Now we are finished! You can fry them:
add them to soups:
Here is a frying tip:
A common way to fry is to add a little oil on a pan and brown the sides of the dumplings. Next loosely cover the dumplings with a clear cover top that is slightly smaller than the fry pan, but able to enclose the dumplings. Pour in about 1 tablespoon of water into the pan so that the water seeps into the enclosed dumplings. Lower the heat. This will function to both steam and fry the dumplings. You can also make it like yakimandu and just fry the dumplings without the water.
***OH! DIPPING SAUCE
Totally forgot about the dipping sauce. Mix soy sauce, vinegar, and red pepper flakes together. Taste and adjust according to the level of tartness you want. You can also add in diced green onions to the sauce.
ENJOY!
