Beef celery dumplings

Explore a different flavor: beef celery dumplings. Learn which cut of meat is best for the filling and how to prepare celery properly.

In my last post I wrote about a classic filling for Chinese dumplings. Actually, in China, the possibilities of dumpling fillings are endless. You can make any combinations, pork, beef, lamb with vegetables or vegetarian, or even vegan versions. Today we are going to make beef celery dumplings.

I originally wanted to take a photo with the ground beef. While I was cutting the meat (the hand cut tastes the best), I figured it would be interesting for you guys to know what kind of beef to use. You can use store ground beef in a pinch. But if you have time, want to choose your cut of meat, grind your own, or even better to hand cut the meat, like we traditionally do, you should know the result is totally worth the effort. The cut I like the most for dumpling is Tri tip steak/roast. Here is the picture of beef I already into thin slices, see how beautiful marbled it is. The price is in the middle range. DO NOT buy “stew meat”, or “round”, which are both very tough. A lot of Chinese use baking soda to tenderise the meat (ever felt the meat in a Chinese restaurant tastes funny?), I really don’t recommend to do that. With tri tip cut you won’t need to anyway.

The sauce from left to right: oyster sauce, dark soy sauce, light soy sauce, and sesame oil.
Dark soy sauce is richer and less salty, it has more ingredients than light soy sauce, often some flavoring agent or sugar is added. It gives food a deep color. When we Chinese are making meat stew we often use the combination of the both. Light soy sauce is thinner. We use it more for seasoning,  it’s also the one we exclusively use to make dipping sauces. If you want only one kind of soy sauce, go with the light one.

Since celery contains a lot of water, after it has been diced, or processed by a food processor, use a nut milk bag, or a large muslin cloth to extract the juice. You will get almost one cup of juice. If we skip this step, all this liquid will make a soupy filling, dumpling wraps will turn slippery after contact with so much water. I’ve made this mistake and had trouble to pinch dumplings closed. If there are too much liquid inside, while cooking, potstickers will turn into stew and boiled dumplings will pop open in boiling water. That’s why the famous dimsum “Xiaolongbao” that has a gelatinous filling turns into soupy interior are steamed not boiled or fried.

See how to make dumpling wrappers from scratch.