My sons rate Asian restaurants by their pork dumplings, and they even factor the cost per dumpling into their rating.  One day last year someone brought homemade dumplings to a potluck, and ever since then we’ve been making them ourselves.   

The recipe for pork dumplings is as simple as mixing up the filling, and plopping it onto premade wrappers.   Yes, you could make your own, but at less than $2/package, you greatly increase the time to table by buying a package from your local Asian grocer.  Although the recipe calls for napa cabbage, I substitute finely chopped regular cabbage with excellent results, and  use the leftover cabbage in other recipes.

The trickiest part of pork dumplings is sealing the wrappers – it’s a lot like fluting a pie crust, but once you have it down it goes very quickly.  We have developed quite the assembly line.  One person sits in front of the stack of wrappers and portions out the filling, the others seal.  They can be steamed immediately, or frozen (on a parchment lined sheet) for use later.  We can go from 0 to dinner in less than an hour.

This past weekend we made a batch, and as we enjoyed the fruits of our labor, the boys calculated that the cost per dumpling was less than .33 each, heartily congratulated themselves on their expertise and thrift, but did not offer to wash the dishes…

Want to make it a meal?  Add chilled mandarin oranges and steamed edamame to your meal plan.