13 Chinese Dumpling Recipes Worth Mastering

A staple of Chinese cuisine, dumplings are the ultimate comfort food. There are many varieties — and the recipes in this roundup range from traditional takes to inspired-versions. They all pay tribute, however, to the beloved flavors and time-honored techniques that make Chinese dumplings one of our all-time-favorite eats. Whether you make them for a celebration like Lunar New Year or for a weekend dinner, dumplings are a great cooking project for the whole family. The best part about having the extra hands to help is you can make a big batch and freeze half for the future, whenever you're longing for some serious belly comfort. This particular recipe is one of our favorites; it hits all the right flavor notes. If you don't have fatty ground pork, add 2 slices of minced bacon to the mixture. The fat from the bacon will give the dumplings the necessary richness.

No dim sum table is complete without siu mai (open-faced dumplings with a thin wonton wrapper and savory "bouncy" filling) and every restaurant's recipe is slightly different. We’ve created a pork and shrimp version for a delicious "surf and turf" combo. The baking soda marinade for the pork and shrimp helps develop the optimal texture of the filling, as does the process of tossing the filling against the bottom of the bowl. Hand-chopping the pork belly also adds to the unique texture, but ground pork could be substituted in a pinch.

Dumplings with a crispy skirt are essentially pan-fried dumplings with a thin and crisp outer layer (the "skirt") for an added texture. They're popular at izakayas throughout Japan, where they're called hanetsuki gyoza ("gyoza with wings") and at Chinese dumpling shops, where they're sometimes called binghua jianjiao ("ice-flower fried dumplings").

Molly says, "Xiao long bao, or soup dumplings, are Chinese steamed dumplings that have soup inside of them. They are like magic! I grew up eating these with my family at our favorite dim sum restaurant in Chicago's Chinatown and later learned how to make them by combining my family's go-to pot sticker recipe with the secret ingredient: soup gelatin, which melts down into soup once the dumplings are cooked."