[Food Diary] Nanchatte Sui-gyoza・なんちゃって水餃子

Threw together this nachatte sui-gyoza (なんちゃって水餃子) soup for a quick Friday night dinner. The inspiration for this was Takeru's campfire nanchatte sui-gyoza in the anime Sozai Saishuka. But they look nothing alike... ( ˆ𐃷ˆ ) Nachatteなんちゃって sui-gyoza水餃子 literally means mock/faux boiled dumplings; so dubbed because they're not actually boiled dumplings, just bite-sized pieces of the filling and the dumpling wrappers boiled up in soup. They're supposed to be like dumplings that broke apart while cooking in the soup.

Takeru's nanchatte sui-gyoza, episode 9, Sozai Saishuka no Isekai Ryokouki.

The recipe I used was the gyoza recipe by RecipeTin Eats. The filling was beef mince, cabbage and chives, as per the recipe, but I added chopped water chestnuts. Not much, just 2 water chestnuts, which I chopped into small pieces. In hindsight, I should've left the water chestnuts out.So something to bear in mind for the next round.

For the soup base, I used shirodashi (50ml Ninben Shirodashi to 700ml water); added Chinese cabbage, seasoned with a little salt, sugar and ground white pepper, and a splash of Shaoxing Huatiao, silky egg ribbons to finish. The Ninben Shirodashi concentrate is like the perfect soup base cheatsheet. I bought a 500ml bottle to try it, and find myself reaching for it every time I need to make a quick soup base.

And of course, I made proper gyoza/jiaozi with the remaining filling. What I like about making gyoza/jiaozi is I can stuff more filling: about 1 tbsp compared to the 1 tsp for wontons. Jiaozi wrappers are also less delicate, slightly thicker and more elastic than wonton wrappers, so they're somewhat easier to work with. Though, the pleating is something I'm still working on. Froze them in 3 batches, which we'll likely eat over the month.

Reminds me of the crochet jiaozi dumplings I made in 2022! The crochet half-moon shui jiao and the crochet crescent jiaozi.