{"id":12252,"date":"2016-06-16T09:00:57","date_gmt":"2016-06-16T13:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/?p=12252"},"modified":"2016-06-14T14:09:57","modified_gmt":"2016-06-14T18:09:57","slug":"all-about-dumplings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/all-about-dumplings\/","title":{"rendered":"All About Dumplings"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over my 5+ years of living in China, I was often asked about what I missed from home. Aside from the obvious family and friends, food and drink always popped up in the discussion. When I first got to Beijing in 2008, I definitely found myself missing craft beer and certain comfort foods from home. Within a few short years, however, Beijing had numerous micro breweries in addition to a wide array of quality BBQ, pizza, and burger joints to choose from. There was no longer much to miss about home in terms of eating and drinking. When I’d fly back to the US to visit, though, I found myself immediately missing Chinese food. As we’ve discussed at length in our “Real Chinese Food<\/a>” series, orange chicken and crab rangoons aren’t exactly the real deal. One dish in particular always had me daydreaming – dumplings<\/strong> (\u997a\u5b50 – ji\u01ceo zi).<\/p>\n

After so many years of living in China, dumplings definitely became a comfort food for me, just as they are for so many millions of Chinese people. The lengthy process required to make a large batch of dumplings makes it a family affair every time you cook them. That is, assuming you actually do it from scratch and not from a frozen bag as I admittedly often did. Especially on major holidays like the Spring Festival<\/a>, Chinese people will get together to spend hours in the kitchen preparing a massive amount of dumplings to enjoy eating together on New Year’s Eve. Dumplings represent togetherness, and there’s no better place to be together than over a few hot plates of them. I’m such a fan of Chinese dumplings, I even wrote a love letter to them<\/a>. Here’s all you need to know about dumplings, including a lot of useful vocabulary:<\/p>\n

Different Styles<\/h2>\n
\"Mmm....

Mmm…. dumplings.<\/p><\/div>\n

When it comes to dumplings, you can eat them in many different ways. Here are the three major ways that people cook dumplings:<\/p>\n