Lunch: Butter Mandu (Butter Dumplings)

Recipe by Deuki Hong and Matt Rodbard This recipe comes from New York chef Deuki Hong's father and has origins in North Korea, the ancestral home of mandu. (Sharing a border with China, it is no coincidence that mandu sounds a lot like the Chinese word f

This recipe includes superfoods such as:

Kimchi

Health benefits of Butter Mandu (Butter Dumplings)

Besides beneficial bacteria, kimchi is also a great source of beta-carotene, calcium, iron and vitamins A, C, B1 and B2. Kimchi and is full of probiotics which balance our pH level and ward off yeast infections and UTIs.

Ingredients

2 cups green cabbage, roughly chopped
2-inch knob of ginger, minced
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 pounds ground pork (80 percent lean)
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1 pound (4 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into chunks and softened to room temperature
45 refrigerated or frozen and thawed round Asian dumpling wrappers
Fresh Napa Cabbage Kimchi for serving
Light soy sauce, for serving
Vegetable or sesame oil, as needed (optional, for panfrying)

Instructions

Place the cabbage, ginger and garlic in the bowl of a food processor and pulse until finely chopped. Place the cabbage mixture in a large bowl.
Using your hands, fold the ground pork into the cabbage mixture just enough to combine. Evenly sprinkle it with the salt and fold it in. Gently fold the butter into the mixture until thoroughly combined.
To assemble the mandu, place about 2 tablespoons of the filling in the center of each wrapper. Be careful not to overfill or the filling could leak while cooking. (If your wrappers are small, decrease the amount of filling per dumpling; the mandu should be full but not hard to close.) Dip your fingertip in a glass of water and paint the edge of the wrapper. Fold the wrapper over to form a half-moon and pinch the edges together to seal. (This is the easiest fold, for simplicity's sake, but you can fold your mandu in a number of fancy ways, like the pros do.) Mandu can be cooked right away or frozen for later (see below).