It ain't Judy Fu's

Last week for the Korean Thanksgiving (Chu Seok) we made dumplings (mandu). I watched this video on utube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zECZXmDmHR0 and thought it looked easy.

Step 1 buy ingredients at store:

We went to our local grocery store to buy all of 5 things - mandu wrappers, meat, onions, tofu, and noodles. I think we left with about 11 things. We walked by the deli and thought about making kimchi dumplings - the lady wouldn't let us buy anything less than a WHOLE head of cabbage kimchi. We considered buying some panchan (side dishes) to go along with our mandu - the lady wouldn't let us buy just one, we had to buy THREE. We were going to buy one container with premixed/preseasoned meat - the lady suggested we buy pork AND beef.

------ so much food for so few people --------

Step 2 make mandu:

It went well - with the exceptional floppy mandu and lack of kitchen space (we made them at our dining table)

Step 3 cook mandu - fried and in soup:

Step 4 eat and enjoy mandu:

We forgot to add mushrooms and buckwheat noodles - making the our mandu's more like meatloaf balls with a thin noodle covering it. It was fun... but they aren't nearly as good as Judy Fu's dumplings.

Lessons learned:

one side dish is better than three, no kimchi is better than a whole head of kimchi, use a light hand when filling mandu with meat, Judy Fu's dumplings cannot be recreated.