1. First off, prepare your dough! If you are using pack pastry, then skip this step - otherwise follow Jeremy’s recipe for making, kneading and rolling homemade dumpling doughhere. (Hint: don’t fold your dough just yet, this will come later in the recipe).
2. Now, onto your filling: rub the salt onto the skin of the duck breast and place in a frying pan skin-side down. Bring the pan to a medium–high heat and cook off without any oil (plenty of fat will start to render off the duck skin) for 6 minutes, then turn and fry for 5 minutes more. Set aside to cool, then finely chop and mix together with the rest of the filling ingredients and the marinade in a mixing bowl.
3. If choosing to make the dough lattice at the base of your gyozas, then at this point mix together the dumpling flour and water in a separate bowl or ramekin until you achieve a consistency similar to a thin pancake batter, or single cream. Leave to one side for later.
Folding
4. Time to fold your dumplings! Choose between our beginners fold, ‘The Mickey Mouse’, or challenge yourself with an ‘Unhappy Fish’ fold - instructions beneath!
Beginners fold: ‘The Mickey Mouse’. Place 1 teaspoon of the filling in the centre of each circle of dough. Fold the bottom centre over the filling to form a semicircle and pinch the top tight. Pinch the two corners of the semicircle together leaving two symmetrical ‘Mickey Mouse ear’ shapes between your centre fold and the corner folds. Now pinch the ‘ears’ in towards you to make four layered folds. Tidy up to create a ‘half-moon’ shape and you’re done!
Intermediate fold: ‘The Unhappy Fish’. Take one pastry and place it flat on your work surface in front of you. Place roughly 1 ½ teaspoons of the marinated mix in the centre of the pastry. Before picking the dumpling up, wet the edges of the pastry with water to help them stick together.
5. Fold the dumpling in half, pinching the pastry together in just the far right-hand corner, cupping the base of the filling with your middle to pinky fingers and freeing your thumb and index finger up to help pleat. Using your dominant hand and holding your thumb on the outside bottom of the pastry, create pencil pleat after pencil pleat of pastry, one on top of the other, in much the same way a curtain folds when drawn along a rail, using your non-dominant thumb and index finger to help press the pleats together.
6. Keep folding the pleats over each other, until you have pleated the entire length of the pastry, keeping your filling in the centre. When you are ready to close the dumpling, pinch the left-hand edge closed and lightly pull downwards at the two ends of your newly created seal of pleats to form an ‘unhappy goldfish’ shape.
7. Repeat until either all the pastries or all the filling has been used up - and you’re ready to cook!
8. Add a tablespoon of oil to a frying pan, set over a high heat. Once the oil is hot, place the folded dumplings into the pan, evenly spaced and with the folds pointing upwards, and fry until crisp and golden brown on the bottom.
9. Now, pour hot water into the pan until the dumplings are half covered, and then immediately cover with a lid. If not making the lattice, steam the dumplings for approximately 8-10 minutes, until all the water has evaporated. Then, remove the lid and allow the gyoza to crisp up on the bottom for a further minute before serving.
10. If you decide to create the lattice, then once the dumplings are half covered in hot water, leave them to steam with a lid on for 3-4 minutes until only a little water is left at the bottom of the pan. Then, add approximately 3 tablespoons of the dumpling flour mix to the bottom of the pan and swirl it around so it touches all of the dumplings. (Hint: you are trying to cover the base of the pan in batter. Add more dumpling flour mix to any gaps, and more water if the batter seems too thick.)
11. Cover the pan once more with a lid, with the heat at medium, and leave to steam for approximately 5 minutes, until the dumplings are cooked and the batter almost solid. Remove the steamer lid and allow the batter to gently bubble for 5 minutes more, on a medium-high heat, until you see an intricate lattice form between dumplings. When the lattice is fully crisp, remove the gyoza from the pan, and serve!
Enjoy!
