Cooking Cheap

I hesitate to recommend Potstickers. They are not easy to shape, they probably aren’t cheap but boy are they tasty. I’ll give the ingredients I used but I recommend you do some web searching. There’s as many recipes as there are for meat loaf.

My mega mart only had the square wonton (pasta), around $2 for what was probably 48 sheets. I used a biscuit cutter to get a round shape, but there’s a lot of waste if your cutter is small as mine was and getting the right amount of filling can only be learned by trial and error. Did I mention, it’s going to take a long time to fill these. Mine were smaller than what you get in a restaurant or from the frozen food aisle. I would do this again if I made my own pasta dough and had a larger circular cutter.

Instructions for filling and cooking are everywhere. I won’t repeat them except to note how I did it.

1/2 Lb. ground pork
2 green onions chopped fine.
1 Tbl bell pepper minced fine
1 Tbl ginger minced fine.
1 or 2 gloves of garlic, minced fine.
1 Tbl soy sauce
1 or 2 Tsp sesame oil.
1 Tbl sherry or rice wine [optional]
1 egg, beaten

You mix all that stuff up. (I used the hand blender mini processor to mince the veg). Mix it well. Then you put 1/2 tsp of the mixture in the center of your pasta round and form it and seal. The larger the circle the more stuff you can put it and the fewer you have to form. You fry a half dozen on one side in oil until they are browned on that side and then pour in 1/3 cup chicken stock (bullion works), Cover and steam for a few minutes, until the stock is gone. Repeat until you have enough for the meal.

The uncooked extras can be frozen and place in a plastic bag and stored in the freezer.

In total, I ended up with 44 small potstickers and some extra filing. Larger wrappers would be less of a chore.

I think the fresh pasta and the chicken stock is what makes these so much better than store bought potstickers.

[A week or two later]
I took a half dozen of the potstickers out of the freezer bag, fried them and steamed them in water. Still wonderful. I think the fresh “plump’s” up a bit more that the frozen but maybe I didn’t steam them long enough.

[Months Later – 7/29/06

I made the potstickers again. This time, I found round pasta sheets so no cutting was required. Saved a few pennies on the dough and got more. 60 of them. I doubled the recipe above though and I ended up with some left over mix. Too much to throw away, not after all that work. Took me an hour and a half to make the 5 dozen. Maybe even might have taken longer.

To the mix, add some thin carrot bits/slices/shreds, a Jalapeño (seeded or whole, your choice) cut the same size (small). I had some dried cloud ear fungus I’ve been meaning to get to. WARNING. A quarter cup dried will swell to a cup when reconstituted. I didn’t want that much. It’s very mild so I probably could have used it all but I only used 2/3 C reconstituted cloud ear, roughly chopped. Think ragu size when chopping the vegs. Almost a fine dice?

Heat the wok to smoking, add a bit of oil and when that smokes (a few seconds) add the meat mixture and the veggies, stir fry, breaking up the meat mixture thoroughly. Towards the end, I tossed in a 1/4 C (or more if you have it) of Thai basil leaves and stir fried them for a few seconds. I turned the wok down to medium and added the simple sauce:

1/3 C water, half a Tablespoon of chicken bullion. 1 Tsp of corn starch. I didn’t measure. I would normally add some soy sauce but there’s enough in the meat mixture and there’s plenty of salt in that double strength broth. Add the sauce to wok and boil down to the desired thickness. I served it over rice.

As well as a wonderful filling for potstickers, the meat mixuture makes a fine stir fry. I think the the Thai basil is important. I’ve had this (Kra Pad Kroa?) in Thai restaurants that used regular basil or deep fried basil leaves. That’s OK but not as good as my way.

Oh, and these potstickers are even better than the first attempt and they were good enough to make more when the freezer bag went empty. These were even better.