Off day Cooking - Gyoza (Japanese dumplings)

Today is my day off and I chose to spend it cooking~ so in the morning I got up early and left for the morning market, I went and bought Chinese cabbage, Long green onions. Went to Giant supermarket after that and got Gyoza wrappers, Sesame oil, Minced meat.

Got home and started preparing the ingredients.

3 - Chinese cabbage leafs
280g - Minced beef (I bought one tube of it in 400g from Giant, so saved the rest for fried rice.)
1 stalk - Long green onion
1 clove - Garlic (mine is pre-chopped)
1 tbsp - Sesame oil
1 tsp - Soy sauce
some black pepper
Gyoza wrappers - really depends on the size, mine was small so I made 30 gyoza(s) with these ingredients. =)

Since my garlic is bought pre-chopped, so I am not sure if this amount is one clove or not. It does look more than one clove, but if you love garlic as much as I do, this will do you no harm! XD

I used 3 Chinese cabbage leafs and cut them in half, make sure the leaf part has lesser of the stem part. 

My gyoza wrappers are small in size, if you manage to get bigger ones maybe you don't need to use all 30 pieces, or you can make the from scratch.

Can't eat beef? No worries! substitute it with chicken/pork/prawn/tofu/tempe

Here are the steps: 

Fill the pot with some water and bring to a boil, add the cabbage in stem first (the harder pieces) wait a few seconds then drop the leaf parts in. Boil for about 1 or 2 minutes.

Strain and use running water to cool it.

Chop them up to small pieces.

Add all other ingredients in with meat in a bowl

Cabbage, garlic, green onions, sesame oil, soy sauce and a dash of black pepper to taste.

Mix all together with your hand, if you want to use a spoon is okay too~

Mix till smooth

Put mixture in the middle of Gyoza wrapper

Wet one half of the circle with a little water, fold it in half

Gather the front side (only the front side, leave the back flat) of the edges to seal the wrapper properly

Line them up~ 

Fry them up, I used medium high heat, my gyoza got stuck to each other because the juice from the beef is seeping through.. I had a hard time separating them since I placed them so close to each other.

Fry till the bottom is brown (this is too much actually), lower the heat, then add a little water and close lid to simmer, after 2 minutes open the lid and let gyoza cook till water evaporates

Viola! you have home made gyozaaa~ The sauce is made with a little vinegar and a little soy sauce, you can add Chili oil. It's optional =)

I did not know that preparing, cooking and taking pictures would take up so much time.. Haha! But I had so much fun making them~ Who knows I may make them again for Bon Odori 2016?

This year's Bon Odori will be held on 23rd July 2016 in Stadium Panasonic Shah Alam. I'll leave a link "here" so you can go visit the Facebook event page to know more about it~

Happy making them gyoza~ they're really good~ you don't require chef skills to make these~