As Gianna wrote in her Tuesday blog this week, we met a Chinese couple, on our last “InternChina Zhuhai office and intern trip”.
Unfortunately, I was not able to go shopping with all of them, but afterwards Lizzy tried to tell me everything you need in order to make dumplings.

Dumplings are often compared to German “Maultaschen” or “Raviolis”.

First of all you need the dough to form the dumplings into their classic shape.

When you go shopping for preparing the dough you need to buy

• flour (250g) either rice, corn or wheat flour
• 150 ml cold or warm/hot water
• salt

It’s pretty simple to make it. You just need to mix the water into the flour.

The bowl in which you put the dough should be big enough to prevent the flour and water from overflowing. Then you press the dough with all your might in your hands, until it is sticky no more.

Then, add some salt and stir it. Once the dough is ready, leave it in the bowl to use it later. One of the best ways is to use cling film to cover it and refrigerate it until well-chilled (about 15-30 minutes).

While you let the dough rise you can go on with step two.

Once you take it out of the bowl you should roll the dough into strips.

For the next step, you will need to make the dumplings skin/outer layer. You can do this by rolling the pin over small pieces of the dough to form circles.

But what’s inside? To add a filling you will need:

• if you are pescetarian you can buy shrimps
• or different vegetables such as mushrooms, water chestnut(马蹄 or 荸荠), carrots, corn, ginger, onions and of course garlic
• for everyone eating meat, you can buy some ground meat of course

Once you got everything you need from the street-shop or wet market in your town, cut out the outer layer from the water chestnut, clean the corn and divide it into parts, peel the carrots and cut everything into small pieces.

Secondly throw everything in a mincing machine to mince. Third, mix all the ingredients till everything becomes a paste. Don’t forget to add some spices (garlic, pepper…)

As you have completed both parts, the dough and the ingredients for the filling, you just need to bring everything together. The seemingly simple way of putting the fillings in the middle of the dumpling skin could be the hardest part of the preparation process. It requires some dexterity and patience. But you will get it – even I have learned how to do it! Now you are ready to boil the dumplings!

The last step is to put them into a pot of hot, boiling water. Once you can see steam coming out, add cold water and wait until it boils again. Then, add water again! When you see the Jiaozi floating in boiling water, you can take them out.

Get your chopsticks and get ready to eat!!!

Do you want to buy the ingredients fresh from the shop around the corner? Kick start your career with an internship in Qingdao, Zhuhai or Chengdu and join in the adventure! Apply Now!