Daring Cooks Challenge - Potstickers

I have recently joined the Daring Cooks an offshoot of the Daring Bakers, a group I have admired from afar but lacked the culinary cojones to join. I admit my baking has improved a bit over the years thanks to all my shiny new tools like a KitchenAid and new mixing bowls and pans but I still felt leary about things like yeast and proofing and making caramel. But when I found out about Daring Cooks I knew I should give it a try.

So what and who are the Daring Cooks? We're a collection of food bloggers who ever moth are given a certain challenge to cook something, well daring. And this month it was potstickers. From Scratch. No wontons wrappers for us.

I really love anything savory encased in dough and I always keep some trader joe's gyoza potstickers on hand for those times when I can't be bothered to cook anything else so I jumped at the chance to make dumplings from scratch.

Verdict for me is that while they tasted good, they could have been better. My first error was with the fillling, I didn't mince everything fine enough. Also the recipe called for bamboo shoots and mushoooms which I omitted becuase I didn't have on hand, instead of napa cabbage and scallions I used regular cabbage and some leeks. The flavors were a little bit off.

My second mistake was that while initally I painstakingly wraping up each dumpling individually to a proper uniform size. According to the recipe, it takes about half an hour to fill each dumpling but I hit the hour mark and kept going! After a while I got impatient with the finicky work of wrapping each dumpling so I sped up the process and ended up with dumplings as long as my ring finger. Mr C my husband and number 1 taste-tester who has made potstickers from scrach when his family hosted a foreign exchange student from China and he commented that a proper dumpling was closer to pinky finger size.

Here is the proper recipe from "Use Real Butter"