Dumpling Filling Calculator

How the calculator works

The calculator scales one recipe, from the Kikkoman Cookbook. It is written for 20 potsticker skins:

• 200 g (7 oz) of ground pork
• 2 leaves of napa cabbage
• 1 tablespoon of sesame oil
• 1 tablespoon of sake
• 1 teaspoon of soy sauce
• 1 clove of ginger and 1 clove of garlic, minced
• a dash of salt, for the cabbage

Enter your number of wrappers and every amount is multiplied by wrappers / 20.

ground pork in grams = wrappers / 20 x 200

That simplifies to 10 grams of pork per wrapper, which is an easy figure to keep in your head at the shop. The recipe puts 1 tablespoon of filling on each skin.

Worked example

Your pack of wrappers holds 50, and you would rather use them all than have half a pack drying out in the fridge.

1. 50 / 20 = 2.5 times the recipe.
2. Ground pork: 2.5 x 200 = 500 g, a little over 1 pound.
3. Napa cabbage: 2.5 x 2 = 5 leaves.
4. Sesame oil and sake: 2.5 x 1 = 2 1/2 tablespoons of each.
5. Soy sauce: 2.5 x 1 = 2 1/2 teaspoons.
6. Ginger and garlic: 2 or 3 cloves of each.

The recipe serves 4 from 20 dumplings, so 50 dumplings is about ten portions of 5.

Going the other way: if you have a 1 pound pack of ground pork, that is 454 g, enough for 454 / 10 = about 45 wrappers.

Making the filling

These steps follow the source.

1. Mince the napa cabbage and put it in a bowl.
2. Massage it with a dash of salt, then squeeze out the excess liquid.
3. Add the ground pork, the ginger, the garlic, the sesame oil, the sake and the soy sauce.
4. Mix until the filling turns sticky.

Step 4 is the one to pay attention to. The filling is ready when it stops looking like loose mince and starts holding together as one mass. A sticky filling is also much easier to spoon onto a wrapper in a neat tablespoon.

Step 2 matters as much. Cabbage is mostly water, and salting and squeezing gets rid of it before it goes anywhere near the wrapper.

Filling and folding

Place 1 tablespoon of filling on each skin. Wet the edge of the skin with water, fold it closed, and shape it.

A level measuring tablespoon is a useful guide for the first few. After that your hand learns the amount. If you find you have filling left over when the wrappers run out, your spoonfuls were on the small side, and the opposite if you run out of filling first.

Cooking them in broth

In this recipe the dumplings are boiled and served in the broth they cook in. For 20 dumplings, the broth is:

• 800 ml (about 3 1/2 US cups) of hot water
• 1 tablespoon of chicken bone broth powder
• 2 teaspoons of soy sauce

Bring the broth to a boil in a pot and add the dumplings. They are cooked when the skins turn translucent and the dumplings float. Add a quarter stalk of negi (Japanese long onion), heat briefly, and serve in the broth. Cilantro leaves are an optional garnish.

The source does not give a time in minutes, and it does not cover pan-frying, so this page does not either. Go by the two signs it does give: translucent skins, and floating.

The calculator scales the filling only. If you are cooking a larger batch, cook it in several lots in the same pot of broth so the pot is not crowded and stays at a boil.

What the calculator does not cover

It is one recipe, for a pork and napa cabbage filling. Chicken, shrimp and vegetable fillings behave differently and have their own proportions, and this page does not guess at them. The 1 tablespoon per wrapper is for the round skins this recipe uses. Larger or smaller wrappers will take more or less.

Tips and common mistakes

Squeeze the cabbage hard. A handful at a time, over the sink, until very little liquid comes out.

Do not overfill. More than the tablespoon and the skin will not close properly, and an open dumpling loses its filling to the broth.

Seal the whole edge. Run a wet fingertip all the way round before you fold, and press out the air as you close it.

Mix the filling until it is sticky, as the recipe says. Stopping early leaves it loose.

Scale the seasoning with the meat. It is easy to double the pork for a bigger pack of wrappers and forget that the soy sauce, sake and sesame oil double too. The calculator lists all of them for that reason.