Crab Dumplings

At the moment I have a bit of an obsession with crab; it’s cheap, it’s so tasty and probably good for you, what more could you want? With this recipe you can pre make the dumplings and set aside for a few hours (as long as they are covered in the fridge) before cooking. Do not use sweet chilli dipping sauce with the infamous blue dragon on the bottle for these dumplings; it will mask the delicate crab flavour, reducing all your hard work to a tangy sweet nothing.

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  What you need for 12:

  • 1 medium sized dressed crab / 1 crab and dress it yourself
  • Spring onions
  • A thumb sized piece of ginger
  • Gyoza wrappers
  • Dark soy sauce
  • Toasted sesame oil 
  • A chilli or more if you want
  • A bunch of coriander
  • A lime

  
  

  How to make it:

  1. Take your dressed crab and scoop out the meat (white and dark) into a large bowl. Finely chop up the chilli and two spring onions and add to the bowl. Grate peeled ginger and put the pulp into the bowl as well along with some chopped coriander.
  2. Season the meat with a splash of dark soy sauce and sesame oil but go light on both as the shell fish is already salty so that’s why I am using dark soy rather than light, and toasted sesame oil can be very over powering if used in excess.
  3. Time to fill the wrappers; start by making sure they are defrosted if you bought them frozen. Take a wrapper out and place half a teaspoon of filling into the centre.  In order to glue the wrapper together to create a semicircle pouch of flavour you need to wet you finger with water and run it around the edge of the circle. Once wet fold the gyoza wrapper over and create a semicircle as shown in the picture.  Push the air out and seal by crimping the edge with your fingers.
  4. Repeat until you use your entire crab filling.
  5. In a hot pan add 2 tbsp of veg oil and then add the dumplings. Fry until the bottoms are golden in colour; this should take less than 5 mins.
  6. To the frying pan add 100 ml of water and cover with a lid / some tin foil quickly to steam the dumplings. Steam for 3-5 minutes or to the point at which all the water has gone. The meat is already cooked therefore the only thing that needs cooking is the wrappers. Take the dumplings out of the pan and plate up.
  7. Now finally make the dipping sauce.  Put 1 tbsp of dark soy, 1 tbsp of toasted sesame oil and a squeeze of lime into a bowl with chopped chilli and spring onion.  Add 4 tbsp of flavourless veg oil with chopped coriander to the dipping sauce.