Making Gyoza for Lunch

When you grow your own food, you tend to cook your own food, too. I spend a lot of time on the farm, so it's only natural that I cook frequently. I usually pack my lunch for the day job, and this morning I woke up thinking about gyoza (a.k.a potsticker). "Thinking" is an understatement. I had an urge of having gyoza for lunch and actually got up at 7 A.M. on an office day.

I bought a pack of ground beef for making curry beef puff pastries a couple nights ago (that was another craving). I knew that I would have leftover ground beef after the puff pastries, so I got a pack of gyoza wrappers as well. I chopped up a bunch of farm fresh scallions and one store bought king oysters mushroom. They were mixed in with the ground beef along with spices. After all the ingredients were mixed well, I started folding the gyoza together. I figured 15 gyoza would be enough for lunch. For those of you who know me, if you want to learn how to fold gyoza, ask me to do a demo for you.

I heated up a few table spoons of oil in a non-stick pan (a well seasoned cast iron pan works, too) and put all the gyoza in there as shown in the picture above.


Let them sizzle for a minute or so then pour some water in there and cover the pan. Reduce the heat to low and let the water steam the gyoza. This way you don't need to turn the gyoza to cook them through. When they are fully cooked, you will see the change in color as they become semi-transparent. I used a Pyrex lid, so I could see them while they cooked.

When they are cooked through, lift the lid and let the water fully evaporate. The oil you put in the pan earlier will start to brown the bottom of gyoza and give them a nice golden brown color. I like my gyoza crispy.

When I was about to have my 15 pieces of gyoza for lunch, all 3 people I was having lunch with asked me the same question, "Are you going to eat all that?" Well, I was going to try. As a result, I offered each of them a piece to shut them up.