The next step is to make the flour. The flour should be a special dumpling flour, because the supermarket near my house does not sell it, so I have to use ordinary flour instead. This flour doesn't work well, so I added an egg to the mix to increase its toughness. The dough should be mixed with a three-light policy: light on the surface, light on the basin, and light on the hands. The mixed dough should be allowed to rise for a while before it's ready to use, and you should cover the dough with a damp drawer cloth during this process, otherwise it will crack and dry out, especially in dry weather or in a heated room.
The dumpling filling consists of three main parts, namely tomato, egg and minced meat. The ratio of the three fillings depends on each person's preference, and I prepared mine today at 2:1:1. For the minced meat, use ground meat, or use sandwich minced meat. Vegetarians can also eliminate this part and use only tomatoes and eggs.
Tomatoes cannot be used directly as a filling, but need to be partially juiced first. The easiest way to do this is to use a juicer and drink the juice that comes out, taking only the scraps to use. My juicer is a pain to clean, so I used the manual method: peel the tomatoes into small slices, add the right amount of sugar and stir vigorously, then decant the oozing juice into a glass as a drink.
Put the rest of the tomatoes on the counter and chop them up a little, add a good pinch of salt and set aside.
Break the eggs into a container and whisk them with a pinch of salt. Add a small amount of oil to the pan, heat it up, pour in the egg mixture and stir constantly to solidify the eggs. If the stirring is not timely in the process of scrambling eggs, the eggs will be scrambled into large pieces, which will need to be put on the board to chop them up before they can be used.
Add salt to the minced meat, pour a small amount of hot oil to remove the fishy flavor of the meat, and then add the two fillings of eggs and tomatoes prepared earlier, and mix well together. If too little juice was removed from the tomatoes in the first place, you will find water oozing out of the mixture at this point. Don't worry, you can put it in the refrigerator for a few moments to solve this problem.
At this point, the dough is almost ready. Knead the dough thoroughly, roll it into a long strip, cut it into even-sized pieces with a knife, and then roll it out into medium-sized rounds, known as dumpling skins. The hand-rolled dumpling skins are thicker in the center and thinner around the edges, and they are much better than the ones you buy at the market, and they are also delicious.
There are some techniques for cooking dumplings: boil water, drop the dumplings into the pot, and use chopsticks to gently stir the dumplings along the edges of the pot to prevent them from sticking to the bottom of the pot. Do not use chopsticks to stir the dumplings in the pot, as this may break the dumplings. The dumplings should be cooked in an open pan. After the dumplings float, you can cover them for a while, but don't cover them if you are not sure. You can also add a pinch of salt or scallions to the water in advance, which is said to make the dumplings more resistant to cooking and less likely to break. When the dumplings are cooked, pull them out with a slotted spoon or strainer and place them on a plate. It is best to invert the plate once more to avoid the dumplings sticking to each other.