Mandu is a Korean dumpling. It could be a family activity. It could turn out to be a family contest. And top of it all, it's yummy!!

So shall we start?

INGREDIENTS
0.6 lb ground turkey
2 packs dumpling wrap
1 egg

1/4 cabbage
2 carrots
1 zucchini

1/2 onion
3 scallions
1/2 tofu

1/2 tbsp ground garlic
2 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
1 tbsp sesame oil
1 tbsp sesame seeds

(OPTIONAL)
1/2 cup dried daikon/radish strips
2 tsp soy sauce

Let's prepare ingredients for the stuffing first.

Slice cabbage into 1 inch lengths.
Steam it lightly in boiling water and squeeze out excess water with cheesecloth.
Then, fry steamed cabbage in a pan with a little bit of oil and a pinch of salt. Think of squeezed out sauerkraut.

Add a pinch of salt on sliced and thinly chopped zucchini strips and let it sit for a while.
Squeeze out any excess water and fry it in a pan too.

(OPTIONAL) Dried radish strips need to be hydrated in water first. Squeeze excess water out. Chop! Chop! and fry with soysauce.

Just like the above picture, chop carrots too and fry (no need to salt or squeeze out water).
Fry ground turkey with little bit of salt until there's no more liquid/water/whatever there is.
The idea is that all the ingredients cannot be watery.
Chop onion and scallion BUT DO NOT fry them.
Squeeze out excess water from tofu. Tofu is supposed to be crumbled.
When you are done, all the ingredients should look like this!

NOW mix all the ingredients from the previous step and an egg together so everything will be mixed nicely. Add salt, black pepper, sesame oil, sesame seeds, and garlic as well.

*Make sure your wrapper can be separated from each other. Gently thaw them. It's perfect when it's still little frozen but separable.

Let's start making Mandu!

Place the wrapper on your left hand (if you are right-handed) and stuff about a spoonful right onto the center of the wrapper.
(WARNING: Please restrain yourself from over stuffing. Remember to leave outer edge area fairly untouched to be used to close mandu...you know to keep everything in...OR it's gonna pop.)

To close mandu up you can use just plain water or nicely mixed egg.
Use a spoon or be primitive like me and dip one of your fingers (wash your hands!) and wet only half, the semicircle edge of the wrapper.

Fold in half and use your fingers to close the edges.

You can make them in different ways. First one on the top is the basic one when you close.
OR you can pinch the edges to make different edges.
OR grab both ends, pull them together and stick the edges together WITH water, of course. That gives you a round Mandu.
(It's more fun when you make this with your family. You'll see that everyone makes different Mandu. Be creative. Have fun with it. Once I wanted a BIG mandu just for me, so I used two wrappers. One for the top and the other for the bottom.)

Here is the quick video of how to close up your Mandu. Sorry it's out of focus...hope this helps...if it's too blurry let me know.

So here are all our finished mandu. Don't eat it just yet. It needs to be cooked first!

So here's the harder part of mandu.

Fry 'em?

Steam 'em?

OR make soup out of 'em? (Recipes to be followed.)

That is a question YOU need to answer.
Enjoy!

How-to Fry Mandu
How-to Steam Mandu

Other Special Recipes:
Easy Spicy Wing
VERY Spicy Noodle Salad
Korean Seafood Pancake

Kimchi Recipes:
Traditional Whole Napa Cabbage Kimchi
Quick 'n Easy version Kimchi

Other Recipes:
Mini Ground Turkey Pancake
Bulgogi-Korean BBQ beef

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Written on January 10, 2009 |