Making Gyoza from scratch is time consuming – albeit more delicious, throwing ready-made gyoza in a pan is super easy, and cooking frozen pan fried gyoza is even easier. The sauce takes less than a minute to make which is ace. Statistically speaking, 98.7% of all life on the planet, including many dogs have eaten dumplings in some form or another but 89.9% have probably never cooked them, especially dogs coz they’re not the best cooks and they prefer raw meat anyway. So we’ll be working with ready-made frozen gyoza in this boot camp recipe.
Contents
Pan Fried Gyoza
Who doesn’t love dumplings? Crazy people, that’s who. Delicious little doughy parcels filled with mincey goodness then drenched in endless kinds of zingy sauces, both soft & crisp to the bite… we can eat these bad boys any time of the day. They give you stinky breath which is great for keeping people at a distance, and they fill your whole mouth up so you don’t have to answer stupid questions. They really are the perfect food. We won’t be making gyoza by hand today, but rather the more traditional frozen-to-plate method. These days, you can easily buy gyoza from your local supermarket. This is more of a how-to than a recipe and it works for pork, prawn or veg.
Types of Gyoza in Japan
Japanese organise their gyoza friends into 4 main groups:
- Yaki Gyoza – the most common type of gyoza found in Japan. Pan-Fried gyoza are very similar to Chinese ‘potsticker’ dumplings.
- Mushi Gyoza – a much healthier way to devour gyoza buddies as they are steamed to perfection in a bamboo steamer – I am sure you have seen these steamers, round in shape about 20cm diameter, usually stacked on top of one another.
- Age Gyoza – these are deep fried resulting in a crispy crunchy parcel that are maybe not as good for you as mushi or steamed.
- Sui Gyoza – one of my favourite which involves boiling the gyoza in soup or stock – they will have a much different texture to all of the above.
Types of Gyoza Fillings
You can probably already speculate that gyoza fillings are as varied as the sands on a beach in Okinawa – there are of course the traditional fillings like minced cabbage, pork, spring onions / chives, garlic and white pepper. And then there are the experiments some play around with to meet the ever-changing demands of dietary needs and tastes – or because they’re bored – here’s are 6 common fillings:
- Vegetarian carrot, mushroom, leek
- Vegan tofu, cabbage, shiitake
- Prawn, cabbage, garlic, ginger
- Spicy Beef Mince
- Pork, cabbage, garlic, ginger, egg
- Chicken mince & mushroom
If the above are simply too mainstream for you, let me drive home the point that gyoza fillings can be anything you want… I introduce you to:
- Bacon & Corn
- Cheese & Kimchi
- Prawn & Avocado
- Mackerel & Shiso
- Curry Vegetables
- Apple & Cinnamon
You’re Welcome!
Equipment we’ll need
- Stove top – gas or electric
- Non-stick frying pan with lid
- Spatula that won’t melt
- Serving plate – pick a nice one
- Small mixing bowl to mix the sauce
Getting Ready
Best not overwhelm yourself and just watch the video below. There are a few important steps to be a gyoza-hero and with some forethought you’ll come up looking pretty good in front of your friends. Practice makes perfect here, so give a few tries before you perform in front of a crowd.
What to Serve with Pan Fried Gyoza
Pan Fried Gyoza works best as a side dish – also it’s more of a share dish that holds hands and takes long walks on the beach with other dishes on the table. I don’t want to tell you who to hold hands with so here are some suggestions and you can make up your own mind.
Suggestions:
- Agedashi Tofu
- Shogayaki don
- Best friends with Karaage
Frozen Pan Fried Gyoza Recipe
Equipment
- Fry pan with lid
Ingredients
- 5 pieces Frozen Gyoza pork prawn veg
- 1 tbsp Olive oil for the beginning
- 200 ml Water
- 1 handful Spring onion finely cut to garnish
Gyoza Sauce
- 1 tbsp Soy sauce
- 1 tbsp Vinegar
- Chilli oil if you like
Instructions
- It's super important to use a fry pan with a lid because we kind of cook gyoza 3 ways; boil + fry + steam.
- Oil up the pan & place the gyoza in the pan on medium heat.
- Add the water to the pan & put the lid on.
- Cook for 4 minutes till it's bubbling away.
- Strain the water out from the pan.
- Put back on the stove, add the second round of oil & cover immediately with the lid & you can use a spatular to loosen them from the surface if you think they're stuck.
- Let those suckers steam themselves into glutinous gyoza goodness for about 2 minutes.
- With a spatular or a really cool wrist flick, impressively land the gyoza cooked-side up on a plate.
- Sauce up these little ninja pods and garnish with spring onion. Dekimashita = Done!
