The Vital Ingredient For Restaurant-Worthy Homemade Soup Dumplings

Soup dumplings are a veritable two course meal in one perfectly contained dish. Eating a dumpling the right way starts with the soup, puncturing the chewy exterior your teeth to drink its steamy aromatic broth before devouring the meat and veggie filled dumpling that remains. If you've only eaten soup dumplings at a restaurant, you might have imagined some high-tech culinary syringe injecting premade dumplings with broth or a super durable dumpling dough you fill up with broth like a water balloon. However, the magic behind their making is an ingredient that you've probably used at home.

The vital ingredient for restaurant worthy homemade soup dumplings is gelatin. The way broth is incorporated into a dumpling without spilling all over the place is by first transforming it into a solid mass. Stirring a packet of fruit-flavored gelatin into hot water and letting it set in the fridge until it's Jello is the same protocol you'll take with savory broth. The broth will only take half an hour to solidify while you prepare the dumpling filling. You'll then blend the gelatinized broth with the ground meat filling to stuff dumpling wrappers. Steaming the dumplings will effectively dissolve the gelatin, returning the broth to its liquid state. Whereas restaurants tend to use a collagen-rich bone broth with the same gelatinizing effects, a packet of gelatin is the shortcut you can use along with store-bought chicken, vegetable, or beef broth. You can also take the store-bought shortcut by using these Twin Marquis dumpling wrappers.

Not only does the gelatin solidify broth for easy dumpling assembly but it also bolsters the broth's thickness when it melts during the steaming process. However, before adding the gelatin to your broth, you should develop the broth's flavor with the help of whole aromatic ingredients like ginger, garlic, peppercorns, and soy sauce. Using fresh, whole aromatics instead of powdered will upgrade your soup dumplings. Swap black peppercorns for these Soeos Szechuan peppercorns for extra heat! Simmering a store-bought chicken broth like this Pacific chicken broth with these seasonings for just 10 minutes will infuse them with the traditional soup dumpling flavors while preparing them for a gelatin packet. After stirring the gelatin into the broth, you can pour it through a strainer to extract the aromatics before setting the mixture in the fridge.

You can take a similar approach to season your ground meat filling. Ground pork is the traditional filling for these types of dumplings, but ground beef also works. Bloom ginger, scallions, and peppercorns in warm water, pouring the infusion through a strainer and into the ground meat. You don't have to saute the ground meat, as it will cook during the steaming. Once the broth has set, you'll want to take it out of its mold and break it up into small pieces by chopping it with a knife. Small pieces of gelatin will more easily distribute throughout the meat mixture, ensuring that each dumpling contains the desired ratio of soup to filling.