My Korean Kitchen

Yesterday, I was reading a post from one of the prominent food blogs, the Traveler’s Lunch box. While I was reading it, it reminded me “again”, how hard it is to have a food blog, especially a recipe blog. Some hard things about having a food blog are (this is what he said) time, literary inspiration, and failed recipes, which all apply to me.

Cooking is indeed a time consuming job. This Kimchi mandu took me about 3 hours until I bit a piece. It was my first trial I remind you, still 3 hours is just too much. Don’t you think? The most stupid thing I did was that I had planned to make this meal on Monday, which is very hard for my and Michael’s body to cope because we weren’t ready to do such hard work at the beginning of the week. I was going to do all the work by myself, which would have killed me, though after making 2 mandu I asked him to help me.

The worst part of all was that the mandu wasn’t presentable for shooting. It tastes nice, but not the best, because the pastry was too thick (rolling the dough was Michael’s job by the way). Come on Mandu, we spent our whole dinner time (5:30 to 8:30) to make you, on “Monday”. I was so frustrated. I could only save 3 pieces of mandu out of 30 steamed ones. I had such great plans for this Kimchi mandu before I started. I was going to steam some, fry some, and make some mandu soup.

I wasn’t going to post any of the article related to the Kimchi mandu until I succeed, but it taught me some good lessons about how to make delicious mandu, efficiently. So I would like to share these with you as I know some people are very keen on cooking this dish right now. Here is the recipe and detailed ideas how it should work. (By the way, I added some pictures to show how I failed, so don’t follow the pictures exactly.)

Kimchi Mandu Ingredients

For mandu pastry (It will give you 30 pastries)

• White flour 3 cups
• Water 1 cup

For mandu filling (You can make about 45 mandu with this filling)

- How would I know this? When I was short of hand made pastries, I used left over pastries from my dumpling pizza recipe.

• Kimchi 400 g
• 1/2 an onion
• Green bean sprouts 150 g
• Tofu 140 g
• Minced pork 200 g
• 1 egg
• Minced garlic - 1/2 tsp
• Salt - 1 tsp
• Sesame oil - 1tsp
• Pepper - 3 sprinkles

Preparation

1. Sieve the flour, add the water, then knead. (The more you knead it, the yummier it gets)
2. Finely chop the Kimchi, onion, tofu, and pork.
3. Par boil the green bean sprouts and chop them finely too.
4. Squeeze the Kimchi, onion, sprouts, tofu, and meat separately. (It is the one of the hardest part. If you have a straining cloth, definitely use it. I didn’t have one so it was harder to squeeze with bare hands.)
5. Mix them in a big bowl (salad bowl), add the garlic, salt, sesame oil, pepper, and egg.

Steps

1. Knead the dough, cut it into pieces.
2. Roll the cut pieces. (into round shapes)
3. Put the rolled pastry on one hand and add filling on top. (I used a mandu shaper, but you can just do it with your hands.)
4. Seal the pastry then place it on a plate or clean table.
5. Repeat 1 to 4 until you use up all the ingredients.
6. Steam it.

How to make “successful” mandu

• Make mandu when you have a full day or at least a half day free to spare. (As I said it is a time consuming job, also there is a mess to clean up afterwards too)
• You will need a big open space. Some Koreans spread old news papers on the floor, and make mandu on the floor. It is easy to spread things, also easy to clean up later. (Flour will be everywhere.)
• When you make the dough, using warm water is better apparently. Also leave the dough at room temperature for about 1 hour, before you use it.
• Make an assembly line, and share the job. (You will need at least 3 people, one person to knead the dough, cut the dough, collect fragmented dough and hand out the cut dough to the rolling person, another person to roll the dough, and another person to make the mandu.) I bet kids will love to participate with the kneading.
• Before you start rolling the dough, spread flour on the board and the dish where you put the mandu. (Otherwise it is hard to separate the dough or mandu later.)
• When you roll the dough, make it thin but not to thin. (I know how you would feel about this. If it is thick, mandu wouldn’t taste nice, and if it is too thin, it will tear out.)
• You don’t need any fancy mandu shaper to wrap the filling. I bought a mandu shaper to make it easier, though once you steam it, it doesn’t look as good as hand made mandu.
• When you steam some mandu, lay the white cloth (straining cloth) underneath it, it is easier to take mandu out from a steamer that way. Otherwise it will loose its good shape.

This is a picture of mandu I sealed with my hands. (You can seal it into whatever shape you want, I fold it in half then wrap the ends round to touch each other)

How to enjoy “delicious” Mandu

• Eat it when it is still warm. It doesn’t taste as good when it gets cold.
• Serve it with some sauce (Mix of soy sauce - 1 tbsp, sugar - 1/2 tsp, chili powder 1/4 tsp, a dash of vinegar and sesame oil) and yellow pickled radish (Danmuji in Korean)
• You can enjoy mandu in different ways. You can steam it or fry it, also make some soup with it.

This is a picture of three mandu I saved.

How to keep the left over Mandu

I have some mandu left over. I intentionally left some to make some soup, which didn’t turn out well either, because I didn’t store them properly.

• Steam all the left over mandu, and cool them down completely. Then put them into a plastic bag, keep it in the freezer. (When you use them again, defrost it for 1 hour on room temperature.)

If you follow my “How To” series well, you won’t fail. By the way, I will try another one in 2-3 weeks.

Related Post

Steamed Kimchi Dumplings (Jjin Kimchi Mandu)

Dumpling Pastry Pizza (Mandupy Pizza in Korean)

Instant Dumplings (Mandu in Korean)

Rice Cake and Instant Dumpling Soup (Ddeok Mandu Guk in Korean)

Appetizers, dumpling, Failed Recipes, how to, kimchi mandu