Pot Sticker Recipe for Cooking with Kids

My little guy loves expressing his artistic side in the kitchen. Like his dad, he would stay in there mixing and stirring all day if he could. He never passes up an opportunity to cook with me, nor I him. This time we recreated a great pot sticker recipe for cooking with kids.

Dive in to Our Pot Sticker Recipe

Finger foods are always great for cooking with kids. Pot sticker prep is easy and requires mixing, stirring, squeezing and rolling. All fun stuff if you ask me! My son is on the autism spectrum so this recipe is good for motor skills and getting used to new textures. Here’s what we needed:

Pot Sticker Ingredients

Filling

• ground pork
• cabbage
• garlic
• ginger
• white wine vinegar (other vinegar may be substituted)
• soy sauce
• red pepper flakes
• green onion

Wrapper

• flour
• hot water
• salt

Dipping Sauce

• soy sauce
• white wine vinegar
• green onion

Pot stickers, or Jiaozi, are a type of dumpling originating in China. They are now widely popular and can be found in restaurants around the world. They may be filled with a variety of different ground meats like pork, beef, chicken, or shrimp and usually mixed with chopped vegetables. My favorite is pork and cabbage. The dipping sauces for pot stickers are just as varied. A lot of recipes call for rice wine vinegar, soy sauce, sugar, ginger, and/or minced garlic. Doing a search on pot sticker sauces will give you an idea of the possibilities.

The Procedure

I let my little guy do the heavy lifting this time. He thoroughly mixed the ground pork with our vegetables, spices, and liquids before refrigerating while we made the dough for the wrappers.

The dough is very simple, consisting of all-purpose flour, hot water and salt. We mixed the ingredients and kneaded to form a ball. After letting it rest for half an hour, we cut the ball into four pieces. Each piece was then rolled out into a log with about a 3/4 inch thickness. Then we sliced each log into 6 equal pieces that would become the wrappers.

To construct the pot stickers, he rolled each wrapper into a 3-inch diameter circle (roughly) and placed about a teaspoon of filling in the middle. I helped him wet the wrapper edges and fold it to form the horn-shaped dumpling.

I took care of the pan-frying and steaming of the dumplings. Cooking with kids is fun, so to keep it that way we don’t let him use knives or fire yet!

Heat some oil in a pan and fry the bottom of the dumplings until golden brown. Carefully add a table spoon of water and cover the pan to steam the dumplings (about 3 minutes of steaming). I then like to turn the dumplings and pan-fry one of the sides also (about 1-2 minutes). Drain on a paper towel.

Lastly, to make the dipping sauce, we mixed equal parts soy sauce and white wine vinegar and threw in some chopped green onion, minced ginger and red pepper flakes. That’s it!

We hope you give this pot sticker recipe a try. Cooking with kids is the best quality time! Leave us a comment and let us know your thoughts. Enjoy!!

Other Appetizer Recipes You May Like

• Air-Fryer Wings
• Zucchini Boats
• Smokey Salsa