It is difficult to imagine a more popular dish than dumplings. Each national cuisine has its own specifics of their preparation. Chinese dumplings are wontons, in Buryatia and Mongolia they eat poses, Israelis prefer to cook meat dumplings in the form of a triangle - fortresses, khinkali are characteristic of Georgia, and sorcerers are characteristic of Belarus.
In Italy, culinary specialists, in addition to meat, also put cheese in ravioli, in Tibet they are crazy about momo vegetable dumplings, and typical German dumplings are multi-cuisine, which contain spinach in addition to minced meat. In Russia, this traditional dish is also distinguished by its diversity. Dumplings are Siberian, Far Eastern, Ural, Moscow, Amur and Little Russia.
The most delicious are, of course, homemade dumplings, molded and cooked with their own hands. Now they are rarely seen. Because of the fast pace of life, people are accustomed to do semi-finished products. But sometimes you still want to arrange a real holiday for yourself and your relatives and please them with a delicious dish made from real meat. Molding dumplings can be done with the whole family. The most important thing is to find the most suitable among the huge variety of existing recipes and adjust it for yourself.
The choice of minced meat for dumplings
If, when choosing meat for dumplings, you chose pork, then it is better to choose its neck or scapula.
To prepare dumplings in Siberian style, it is better to take pork or beef (or even veal), in addition, pork should be selected fatter, otherwise the dumplings may come out dry. If the choice fell on beef only, then it would be nice to add a small amount of chopped lard to such minced meat. There is an opinion that the taste of minced meat is richer and tastier when it combines several types of meat. For dumplings, even a bird or lamb is suitable, you can even find elk, bear cub and venison in exotic recipes. It is better to choose meat as fresh as possible.
Traditionally, onion from pork dumplings (recipes we will discuss later in the article) is added onions, which must first be chopped in a blender, the filling will become juicier and richer, the more onions to add there. Previously, for the same purpose, in the villages of Siberia, when preparing the filling, crushed ice or frozen juice of local berries was put in it.
To make mincemeat taste more tender and piquant, some culinary experts add ground cabbage or zucchini to it. Whether to add cream or milk to the egg filling, it is worthwhile to decide based on taste preferences only, the same applies to the amount of salt and pepper. For aroma, you can add a little nutmeg or other spices of your choice.
Do it yourself classic minced pork dumplings recipe
In the process of choosing pork for minced meat, it is important to pay attention to the degree of freshness of the meat and the absence of a characteristic smell that pork may have. The minced meat, and subsequently the dumplings prepared with it, will be juicy and tender from the pork shoulder and neck.
Stuffing Ingredients
For the preparation of juicy pork dumplings, the recipe for minced meat is as follows.
We will need:
- onions - 1.5 -2 pcs.;
- pork (of sufficient fat content) - 500 g;
- ground black pepper;
- salt - 0.5 tsp;
- garlic - 2 cloves;
- milk or cold water (by eye);
- universal dry seasoning.
Making tender minced pork dumplings
We begin to cook the stuffing.
- Rinse whole pork meat and cut into cubes.
- We measure out about half a glass of water or milk and put it in the refrigerator.
- Peel and chop the onion and garlic cloves.
- Place the onion in a blender or food processor and grind it to the state of gruel.
- Scroll meat with garlic through a meat grinder.
- After that, scroll the pork again.
- We put the minced pork and mashed onions in a deep bowl, add salt, pepper, seasoning, mix everything thoroughly.
- From the resulting stuffing, we select a small lump and beat it, throwing it on a cutting board. Next, transfer to a separate clean bowl.
- In the same way, beat off the remaining minced meat.
- Now you need to determine the density of the resulting mince by eye. If it came out thick and dense, then we add cold milk there - pour it in small parts and immediately mix after dilution.
- That's all, minced meat is prepared, you can sculpt dumplings with its addition.
Do-it-yourself pork and ground beef for ravioli
Beef and pork dumplings, the recipe of which we will discuss later in the article, is the most familiar and traditional version of this famous dish. Today, stores offer a wide variety of cooking options. Products differ from each other in size, shape and filling, but still such an easily accessible method can not be compared with a dish prepared with your own hands.
The most suitable option for the filling is an equal amount of beef and pork meat. In this way, the dumplings will be the most juicy, delicate and fragrant. Pork itself is rather fat, and beef meat, on the contrary, is dry, tough and lean. Accordingly, individually they will not give an ideal result. It is not advisable to change the ratio of meat to minced meat. In order to make the stuffing more airy, soft and juicy, you can use some tricks without changing the proportion of ingredients.
The best meat option for the filling is fresh or fresh. It is worse when frozen meat is used, because it contains a lot of liquid, and when thawed, such meat loses its taste and useful properties.
Before considering a recipe for beef and pork dumplings, we will learn how to cook minced meat.
Cooking Ground Beef
To prepare delicious pork dumplings, the forcemeat recipe can be used as follows. We will need:
- beef - 300 g;
- pork - 300 g;
- egg - 1 pc.;
- onions - 1.5-2 pcs.;
- garlic - 4 cloves;
- salt, ground black pepper - to taste.
Cooking pork and beef dumplings minced meat:
- First, prepare the meat. We clean it of tendons and films, rinse and dry. Next, we carefully grind the prepared meat with a meat grinder about 3 times.
- If possible, chop the onion with a blender and then add the meat. If a blender is not at hand, we try to chop the onion as small as possible, however this will take a little longer.
- Salt and pepper mixed with onion meat, then add crushed garlic.
- Beat the egg thoroughly with a fork and send it to the minced meat.
- We thoroughly knead all the ingredients, then they need to be beaten off. To do this, collect the minced meat in a lump and forcefully throw it on the table or cutting board. Repeat this action about 10-15 times. Thanks to this beating, the stuffing will be very juicy and tender.
- So, our filling is now ready. We can start the formation of homemade homemade dumplings.
- In the event that the minced meat seems too liquid, you do not need to change the ratio of meat and use more beef. Instead, it will be more efficient to add chopped bread crust to the minced meat. Or, if it turns out that the minced meat is slightly dry, add egg white, previously thoroughly beaten.
Pork and Beef Dumplings Recipe
Consider tips for making homemade dumplings dough
Before kneading the dough, the flour must be sieved. Thanks to this, it will be enriched with oxygen and the resulting dumplings will be lush, since baking powder is not used in this recipe. For dumplings, fresh dough is usually prepared. The method of its preparation is extremely simple: pour flour into a deep bowl or directly on the table, make a small deepening on top, break an egg into it, add water and salt. Sometimes water can be replaced, for example, with milk, cream, sunflower oil, but eggs are excluded from some recipes.
The cooks came up with an interesting method for making dough, in which milk is heated, eggs, salt and a little flour are added to the hearth. Then the resulting mixture is heated in a water bath to a thick state and mixed with the remaining amount of flour. If you cook the dough in this way, it will turn out tasty, tender and rich.
You can also make choux pastry. To do this, first pour the flour with boiling water, and then add all the remaining ingredients. Such a dough will not stick to your hands and it is easy to tear, so sculpting dumplings from it is much more convenient. If you add food coloring or other products with a coloring property to the dough, then the finished product will come out colorful and fun. For example, with the help of turmeric, the dough will turn yellow, spinach puree will make the dough green, and tomato paste or tomato sauce will color the dumplings in red-orange.
What form of dumplings is preferable
Considering the recipe for pork and beef dumplings, we dwell in more detail on what form of products to choose.
The dough requires good kneading, no need to spare energy and time for this process. Then we wrap it with a damp cotton cloth, cover with a bowl and leave it for about half an hour. This step of the recipe is very important, because during the period of the so-called “rest”, the dough acquires elasticity, strength, stops tearing during the process of molding dumplings and their cooking, even if it is rolled into a thin layer.
Dumpling blanks can be made in two main ways:
- The first way: we roll out the dough with a thin layer (about 2 millimeters), with a glass or a special mold, circles are cut out of it, a little mincemeat is placed in their middle.
- The second way: first we roll the dough into a bundle, then we cut it into small pieces, each of which should be rolled separately.
We will determine how to properly make dumplings: in a special dumpling or all the same with your hands. By and large, the form does not play any role. The fact is that dumplings simply save time and effort, and dumplings come out beautiful, neat and identical to each other. At the same time, if the correct form of dumplings bears for you the preservation of culinary family traditions, then, of course, it is better to sculpt them, following the culinary customs, carefully pinching the edges of the dough.
How to cook dumplings
According to this recipe, dumplings from pork and beef are cooked as follows.
Products should be cooked for about 15 minutes in boiling and pre-salted water, in addition, sometimes dumplings are cooked in broth (vegetable, fish, meat), which is traditionally added with a little onion and bay leaf to give a rich taste. After the dumplings float to the surface of the water, you need to let them boil for a while (literally a few minutes) and then remove from heat.
There are many options for serving ready-made homemade dumplings: with the broth in which they were prepared, with the addition of sour cream, mustard, horseradish, mayonnaise, ketchup or any other sauce - it all depends on individual taste and imagination. On the table next to the dumplings, it is advisable to put a pepper shaker with black and red pepper, butter, sliced into slices and a plate of chopped greens.
There are many recipes for pork dumplings. In addition to cooking, products can be baked in an oven, steamed or fried in a pan (you can either raw or already cooked). The golden crust gives dumplings a particularly mouth-watering appearance. It is especially tasty to pour fried dumplings with sour cream and serve, along with herbs and any seasonings - to taste.
If you want to freeze dumplings, then it is better to do it right away until the minced meat has let out the juice, otherwise the products will get an unappetizing and unpresentable appearance. For the same reason, you should not postpone the cooking of ravioli, and is it really necessary to deny yourself pleasure, putting it aside for the future?
So, we examined the classic recipe for dumplings made from pork (or ground beef). Having understood how to make the perfect dish with your own hands, you and your loved ones will completely stop buying and preparing semi-finished products from the store, because there is nothing tastier than homemade food!