Is there any food more joyful than dumplings? They’re cute, they’re small, they’re plump and juicy and ready for your favorite dipping sauces — another gleeful food category.
Just in time for Lunar New Year, five of our New York Times Cooking recipe developers have shared their favorite dumpling recipes, all of which are easy to make at home. There’s no special equipment required, and there’s a video for each dumpling to guide you through any new pleating or cooking techniques. (Though I can say from experience that a dumpling with messy pleating still tastes fantastic.)
The lineup is positively mouthwatering: Monday featured Eric Kim’s kimchi napjak mandu, and today we have Sue Li’s chile oil wontons. I won’t completely spoil the rest of the week for those who want to go dumpling by dumpling, but I will say that, unsurprisingly, there’s a vegetarian dumpling banger from Hetty Lui McKinnon, and Genevieve Ko closes us out with sweet treats that have earned rave reviews from those lucky enough to try them.
Featured Recipe
Chile Oil Wontons
I’m especially excited for Sue’s chile oil wontons, considering that I used to put away order after order of these at Shanghai Asian Manor in Manhattan’s Chinatown. You can make the dumplings with either chicken or pork, and it takes just two simple folds to make them look like gold ingots. I do like folding and pleating (as a knitter, I find this kind of repetitive handiwork soothing and good for putting down the phone), but sometimes you want a quicker path to homemade dumplings in a sweet-spicy-savory sauce. Sue’s got you.
Watch Sue make her dumplings here →
Let’s say you’ve made a small township’s worth of dumplings, or you have a bag or two of your go-to dumplings ready in the freezer. You’ve already steamed and fried and dipped your way to dumpling happiness and now want something different but still dumpling-adjacent.
Hetty has two five-star dumpling salad recipes, one with smashed cucumbers and a peanut sauce and the other with fresh tomatoes and a chile crisp dressing. For the soup seekers, Kay Chun has an invigorating hot and sour dumpling soup that comes together in just 15 minutes; and here’s Hetty’s dumpling noodle soup, which gets an extra umami boost from a good dose of miso.
You can find the full Dumpling Week lineup here, and, if you haven’t already, you can browse our collection of Lunar New Year recipes here. And dumplings are a real the-more-the-merrier affair: Invite friends over, put on your favorite playlist and stuff and fold together. And eat. Happy Dumpling Week!
