S6 E24: Dumpling Lasagna

We're taking on a trending recipe this week - dumpling lasagna! Maybe you've seen it on the socials... layers of dumpling wrappers and filling, individually layered in adorable little ramekins. We wanted to try it out and see for ourselves if this trend was worth the hype. 

Erin used a dumpling filling she was familiar with made with pork and shrimp. You can use a dumpling filling you love (or grab this one from the recipe on our website - linked below). When your little ramekins of deliciousness are all filled up, you're going to steam them. Top with some chili crisp and green onion. 

As to whether they live up to the acclaim, they sure do! These are a heck of a lot easier and faster than wrapping dumplings, are a fun way to serve individual portions, and taste so good! The hype was well-deserved in this case.  

Get the recipe: https://www.threekitchenspodcast.com/post/dumpling-lasagna

 

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Transcript

Heather (00:12)
there's a reason this one was trending. It's very good.

Erin W (00:14)
Mm-hmm.

Erin W (00:16)
the dumpling lasagna

Well hello and welcome to today's episode of 3Kitchens Podcast. My name is Erin Walker. I am joined with Heather Dyer. And I've got a food trend to test out baby.

Heather (00:26)
Hello there.

Trends. The trends are always so interesting. I'm sure there are like people who have studied it, but like how does something become trendy and how does it... You know what I mean? Like what...

Erin W (00:41)
Yeah, this

The spread of it is always interesting. And I also like how some of these food trends cause like shortages or outages of certain ingredients because so many people all of a sudden in one area decide to go and do it. So.

Heather (00:46)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, like when

people were during COVID when everybody wanted to bake bread and then flour kept selling out. yeah, totally. ⁓

Erin W (01:04)
and yeast. Yeah. Then, then we made our own with the sourdough

sorters.

Heather (01:12)
Well, some people did. I had zero success. Mine was a big fail. I did make bread from it and it tasted slightly sourdough-ish, but it didn't do what it was supposed to do. Yeah.

Erin W (01:14)
Some of us, yeah.

Mmm.

right?

Okay, well, this one I'm really excited about because we have tried to make these before and they worked out really good, but they were really onerous to make. And this also fits well with the theme of this season for some reason, is dumplings.

Heather (01:29)
Okay, well, this one I'm really excited.

I'm like waiting to know what is the theme of our season.

Erin W (01:51)
We've had a lot of stinking

dumplings in this season again. We started out with two dumpling like recipes. I've got another dumpling that I wanna make that's on my list. And then lo and behold, the dumpling lasagna

pops up on my food media. And I'm like, now I have to do this.

Heather (02:11)
It's been all over the place.

I'm so glad you're doing it because it looks so good and so much easier than a traditional dumpling. So I'm excited too.

Erin W (02:14)
Yes.

Yeah, so I have a soup dumpling recipe that's kind of like a gyoza dumpling recipe. It's got pork and shrimp. It's got cabbage, garlic, ginger, onions, mushrooms, bacon, fat, soy sauce, sesame oil, sake, sugar, cornstarch, and pepper. So it's a really yummy dumpling mix. Everything there is gonna get chopped up. I've made these before. I know they taste.

Heather (02:43)
Mmm.

Erin W (02:50)
But we're going to make this with dumpling layers.

in a ramekin.

Heather (02:56)
Yeah, like how much easier does that sound? Right? You're just layering dumpling wrapper with filling, dumpling wrapper. I don't know how many layers it has. And then I can't remember the cooking method. I've seen it. Oh, right.

Erin W (03:04)
Yeah.

It's steamed, so you put it in like a big

pan with water and then your lid on and then you steam these guys and you should have.

dumplings in lasagna form.

Heather (03:18)
Mm-hmm. Well,

yeah, it's like deconstructed dumplings, kind of. Mm-hmm.

Erin W (03:24)
Yeah, yeah, I

really, I'm pretty psyched about this.

Heather (03:28)
I'm sorry.

Erin W (03:29)
And so are my kids, because

you know my one son, just anything I make that's like from the Asian category, he's like, yeah, I'm in. He even has been sending me videos lately on his social media being like, mom, can we make this? Mom, can we make that? And they're all Asian foods.

Heather (03:38)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I agree.

⁓ I can't wait. Yeah, it does look really good. And I'm sure you could make it like with whatever sort of dumping filling is your favorite. Right?

Erin W (03:54)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

I'm thinking you could kind of change that up. Like remember the dumplings that we had a few years back? Yeah.

Heather (04:08)
The Momo, is that the Momo?

What was in those ones? Do remember?

Erin W (04:12)
I don't know, but they were a bit spicier. Right? Like they had more spices and seasoning in them.

Heather (04:14)
Okay.

Yeah, I can't remember. I'm going to have to go back and listen to that one again. See what was in there. And those were the open face kind of ones, weren't they? You pinch the corners, but you leave it open. Is that the one? ⁓ shoot.

Erin W (04:22)
Yeah.

No, those were the ones

that were in that bright fluorescent dough. Do you remember there were some really bright blue?

Heather (04:37)
No, I don't remember. ⁓ we have so many episodes, so many recipes, going back five years almost. It's really easy to forget. I wonder how many dumplings we actually have.

Erin W (04:39)
Okay.

I we have

made the most dumpling-like things out of all the types of recipes, like when you think of a filling wrapped in a dough.

Heather (05:00)
Yeah, I mean some things if you classify it that way you could say an empanada is a dumpling but I don't classify that as a dumpling, right? Would you? ⁓ okay.

Erin W (05:09)
I kind of think it is. Like even the gnocchis

we've made are like a type of dumpling.

Heather (05:15)
No, yes.

See, there's dumplings that are not stuffed like a gnocchi or a ⁓ there was something else that I was that just came and went out of my brain. The German one, Spätzle, Spätzle, Spätzle, I forget. ⁓ that's type of dumpling. It's sort of like boiled dough but I think it's considered a dumpling. But the ones that are more like a bread on the outside, I never think of those as a dumpling.

Erin W (05:27)
The schpitzel? Yeah. No, you're probably saying it right.

Mm-hmm.

Heather (05:43)
But I guess they are.

Erin W (05:44)
I guess they're not as much, but you've made those pierogies.

Heather (05:48)
More pierogi feels like a dumpling.

Erin W (05:49)
Progi for sure is a dumpling, right? Like I think out of all

the things we've made, dumplings is one of the things we've made the most of. Raviolis.

Heather (05:56)
ravioli. You made those

delicious ravioli with like a

Erin W (06:01)
⁓ it was a pumpkin or a squash? Butternut squash, yeah.

Heather (06:05)
⁓ yum

with like brown butter sage. my god why does this why do we do this podcast here it just makes us eat it makes us hungry and it makes us want to eat. Okay.

Erin W (06:16)
Because I live for food, Heather. I live for it. And

this is going to be good dumpling lasagna. I've already got all my ingredients, so I know I'm not going to get caught in everybody else is doing this. It's sold out, so I'm ready to go. I'm hitting the ground running. And we'll see. I might send these to you raw so you can cook them, steam them yourself.

Heather (06:45)
fresh.

Erin W (06:45)
and eat them fresh, so

I'll keep you in the loop because I have a feeling if I make them and send them to you, it won't be as good as if I give these to you to steam up on your own accord.

Heather (06:56)
Yeah, because you'd have to figure out how's the best way to reheat something.

Erin W (07:00)
Yeah, I don't want to go through playing that

game, so.

Heather (07:03)
Okay, well I can't wait. Send me the dumplings!

Erin W (07:05)
Yeah, I don't have...

All the dumplings shall go your way. Okay.

Heather (07:10)
Nice.

Erin W (07:34)
Okay, we're back. I am super excited to talk about dumpling lasagna.

Heather (07:34)
happening.

Erin W (07:39)
So for the filling, used a soup wonton recipe that we had acquired from our previous co-host, Sarah.

I modified it a bit as I do with everything. As you should. So all the ingredients and their amounts will be written up on our website. So I won't go too much into it. But we had ground pork, shrimp that I had chopped up.

Heather (07:55)
As you should. ⁓

Erin W (08:14)
really fine until it was almost a paste. This was a lot of chopping. ⁓ Four small onions. ⁓ Ten bok choy.

Heather (08:26)
⁓ wow.

Erin W (08:26)
so 10, not 10 full bunches of bok choy, but 10 leaves. So like, you know how the bok choy you break off like a single frond of, yeah, okay. Not 10 whole bok choy, good grief, no.

Heather (08:34)
⁓ okay, okay.

Sure, yes, yes. Okay, I was thinking of the whole thing.

Erin W (08:46)
Equal amounts of garlic and ginger that I mashed up in my mortar and pestle. ⁓ Mushrooms that were chopped really fine. And then a couple tablespoons of bacon fat.

Heather (09:03)
⁓ interesting. Was this your own secret ingredient?

Erin W (09:04)
So all of this

No, it's written here, but I feel like whenever bacon fat's in something I'm really excited because I've always got jars literally in my freezer frozen that I keep so when I get to use it I get really excited. I'm like, ooh, taking out the bacon fat! Alright.

Heather (09:24)
Yeah

Erin W (09:25)
So all of that went into large bowl and I just mixed this up with my hands, getting that bacon fat to break down, warm up and integrate with everything. just mush, mush, mush until you get a nice even paste of meat and vegetables. ⁓ And then I added in soy sauce, sesame oil, cooking wine, sugar,

cornstarch and pepper. So that was the seasoning that went into the dough mix. This was the most labor intensive part of making dumplings. It's so awesome that making the meat is the hard step of this because you're not like, now I have to stand here for six hours and fold these dumplings. Because that's what I would have done.

Heather (10:09)
Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Erin W (10:12)
Now we're just going to toss it into lasagna. Yay. So, so easy. You've got these little ramekins and you've got your, I got wonton wrappers. So I didn't get dumpling wrappers. I got wonton wrappers. I'm sure there's a difference. So I'm

Heather (10:27)
Yeah,

that was going to be my question, but I feel like a.

Erin W (10:30)
Dumping wrappers tend to be circles. Wonton wrappers are square.

Heather (10:33)
Yeah.

I wonder if that's the only difference. I was thinking that a dumpling, feels a bit thicker. The wonton ones feel a bit thinner, but I might just be making that up.

Erin W (10:39)
Mm-hmm.

I don't know. I would agree with you on that. I think you could use, I think you could use either one. I would say just don't use a spring roll wrapper because those are meant to be fried, but both dumpling wonton wrappers are meant to be steamed or boiled. So you're good to go. So in your ramekin, you start by taking, and I use just my ice cream scooper for this, one scoop of your meat mixture.

Heather (10:43)
Anyway, doesn't matter. Maybe you could use either one for this. Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm.

Yeah.

Erin W (11:06)
and then you put a dumpling wrapper on top and press it down so that your meat is in a nice even layer. And then a scoop of meat and then a dumpling wrapper and then a scoop of meat and a dumpling wrapper. And so I just did that until I filled up my ramekin and it was four layers.

And then I popped about a tablespoon of water in there, not much so you've got all four layers on there.

you finish it off with a dumpling wrapper on top.

So I made four of these because I had four ramekins and I had enough meat then afterwards to make four more. Plus I still have some in my fridge. So I'm going to just make them into like some little wontons and cook them up for my kids. So this makes easily, I'm going to say eight to 10 servings of this dumpling lasagna. And I would

Heather (11:54)
Nice.

Erin W (11:56)
say that one lasagna is per person.

So, so to cook these, we're steaming them in your big Dutch oven. You're just going to put them down in there. Fill it until it's halfway up the ramekin with water.

Heather (12:01)
Okay.

Erin W (12:09)
Put your lid on.

turn on your stove to medium-high. Once it's boiling, let them sit in there for 30 minutes.

And then I tested it with a meat thermometer. So I think depending on how many layers you do and the size of your ramekin, the cook time will be different. But for these ones, which I think were a little bit bigger than a typical one, was 30 minutes.

So just internal temperature to 160.

Heather (12:33)
Mm-hmm.

Erin W (12:36)
and then take them out and you want to put a little bit of sauce on top.

So for the sauce, my recommendation was equal amounts of rice vinegar and soy sauce. And then go crazy with whatever else you want. So what I put into yours was...

Heather (12:43)
My equal amounts of rice vinegar

So what I put into

Erin W (12:55)
grainy mustard, gochujang.

Heather (12:57)
Ooh.

Mmm.

Erin W (12:58)
of just

shaky shaky shaky drizzle it on there ⁓ I forgot to give you green onions to put on top too because you should have fresh green onions I'm so sorry

Heather (13:09)
That's okay. You know

what, I even had some in the fridge and I didn't think to put them on there.

Erin W (13:16)
And dig in. Eat with a spoon. We had rice and broccoli on the side. These took no time to make up. There was a lot of chopping in preparing the meat, like chopping all those onions, chopping all the mushrooms, chopping all the shrimp. My chopping arm was done at the end of this.

But then just scoop, layer, steam, and you're done.

Heather (13:39)
Could you make that filling and freeze it and then pull it out later when you want to make some?

Erin W (13:43)
I don't see why not.

Heather (13:45)
Yeah, that's what I'm thinking, right? Like if you have time. Yeah. ⁓ this was so good. I mean, we both were like, we really wanted to eat this because we love dumplings. But what I liked about it was like the texture of it. When you put your fork or your spoon into it, it was just like so smooth and those

Erin W (13:47)
Yeah, you could make this ground meat mix and go for it whenever you want.

Mm-hmm.

Heather (14:11)
wonton wrappers in there just are like silky and it's not like a thick like a lasagna noodle when you think lasagna like it is like lasagna in that it's layered with a noodle type thing

Erin W (14:22)
Mm-hmm.

Heather (14:24)
but it's like, it just melts in your mouth. Like, I just loved the texture of it. And of course the flavors are delicious, but I knew I was gonna love the flavors because it's a dumpling and who doesn't love that? ⁓ I just was blown away by how smooth and silky, like all your chopping does make a difference, I think. Because if you were to come up,

Erin W (14:26)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Heather (14:49)
upon like a big chunk of onion or something in there that was a bit more chewy like that would ruin that velvety smooth silky texture of the whole dish. just I just loved it and I'm sure somebody out there will say you need some kind of texture contrast. I don't know I watch enough cooking shows that they always say things like that but I didn't maybe that's the onion on top maybe that's your green onion.

Erin W (14:56)
Mm-hmm.

There's your like,

yeah.

I loved this too, I thought it was so good. When my kid found out I was making it, he canceled plans and was like, I'm staying home for dinner tonight. I'm not missing this.

Heather (15:25)
Smart, smart boy. ⁓ I started, as I was eating it, I started thinking of like all the different ways you could, like I was thinking of those lion head, Chinese lion's head meatballs that are, have the water chestnuts. See, there would be a crunchy bit if you wanted, you could add like a little finely chopped water chestnut into it. I was just thinking of all the different dumpling filling.

Erin W (15:27)
you

There's the crunching.

Heather (15:49)
that you could swap this out with. There were different sauces. I put like chili oil, chili crisp on mine, cause I put that on everything. ⁓ so good.

Erin W (15:57)
Yeah.

Yeah, I really enjoyed all these, the way it came together. And I just liked how you could just spoon it out and you would get this like beautiful stacked layer of all the noodles and stuff. And then it was really hot. So you had to like patiently blow it off. And then it was this wonderful mouthful of, did you feel like the chefs getting their giant mouthful and just.

Heather (16:04)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah,

they would have half of that.

Erin W (16:27)
Right?

Heather (16:28)
cooking class were blindfolded chefs. If anyone's listening and wondering what we're talking about. ⁓ Yeah, just, this was, there's a reason this one was trending. It's very good.

Erin W (16:30)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, and I think even if you wanted to make these all up, and then if you have the ramekins, maybe you could make them up and freeze them and then pull them out, saw them and toss them into your steamer. But I mean, I think it took me maybe 10 minutes to assemble yours when I brought them over, because it's like scoop, noodle.

Heather (16:51)
yeah.

Yes.

Erin W (17:05)
Yeah. Yeah.

Heather (17:05)
Because you've done all the work already. All the choppy chopping.

Mm. ⁓

Erin W (17:10)
It's always fun to

try a yummy food trend.

Heather (17:14)
Yeah, I love when the trends actually are trend worthy. Not like, why is this a trend? What was so great about that? You know what I mean? This one.

Erin W (17:23)
Like the butterboard?

Heather (17:24)
yeah, that does. And I love butter, but that doesn't look good. ⁓ I love the idea of it. No, I don't want to make This one was just yum.

Erin W (17:26)
And I love butter.

Yep.

And if you don't have a good dumpling recipe to go off of, go to www.3kitchens.com where you can... 3kitchenspodcast.com. I'm new here, sorry about that. And check out our dumpling recipe.

Heather (17:43)
podcast, threekitchenspodcast.com.

so good. Hey, I have a little cheat for you. Not that it will save you a whole bunch of time, but I recently on a whim bought the jar of minced garlic and ginger. It's like all minced. It's all together in a jar. It's like just a small jar.

Erin W (18:01)
Boom.

⁓

Hey!

Heather (18:12)
And I've been putting that in all kinds of things that call for garlic and ginger. I'm like, ⁓ I have that. I don't have to, it's all mixed. So I just put a big old scoop in there. There you go. It would save you just a tiny bit of time. You still have to chop all the other things. My latest discovery.

Erin W (18:18)
I've got it.

But that's great. I love that. I didn't even know you could

buy jars like that. I've seen the chopped ginger or chopped garlic by itself, but I've never seen the combo.

Heather (18:36)
I some...

Well, I sometimes spend little bit of time looking at really closely at all the things in the international aisle at the superstore because every so often I find new like a whole section of stuff that's like, where's this from? This is new. What are all these things? So I was like, I'm going to try this. Very convenient.

Erin W (18:48)
Mm. Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Heather (18:58)
And I know there's those haters out there who complain about, they call it jarlik. Garlic and a jar, jarlik, and they don't like it. If you see jarlik, it means a person doesn't like it. It's like derogatory. But I like the jarlik, ginger combo. I don't know what you call it, but it's good.

Erin W (19:19)
Whatever works for you, go for it. No judgment here, just eat it.

Heather (19:21)
Exactly. Mm-hmm.

As long as it tastes good, who cares? Go and make this everybody. This one was a real gooder.

Erin W (19:31)
Yeah, worth the hype.

Heather (19:33)
Mm-hmm.

Heather (19:55)
We don't, homie don't play that. What was that from, homie? Oh god.