A super easy and yummy vegan potsticker recipe with mushrooms.

Recently I got several chances to visit a friend who is on vegan diet. She introduced me lots of wonderful vegan restaurants providing vegan dishes with wonderful flavor. Among all of them, my husband loves the dumplings and potstickers the most. In the past, he insisted that dumplings without meat is "not dumplings" and I believe that his opinion should be changed ever since.

There are lots of vegan filling for dumplings and potstickers including vegetable filling mainly using cabbage, wood ear mushrooms, carrots, vegetarian filling with eggs, Zucchini, eggplant and so many other options. I will list all of them on my to do list. This mushroom filling introduced here has a very strong flavor of mushrooms. Since there are large group of amino acid included, the filling is very yummy.

One of the comment treatment for non-meat dumpling ingredients is to remove the water after a short period of pickling with salt. I used to do that too. However after chat with the chef of the vegan restaurants, I found a new way. Juice from vegetables and mushrooms in most cases are quite delicious. But the thin juice spoil the dumpling wrappers and thus can't be included in the filling directly. If I can turn the juice thicker, it can be used used to create yummy flavors.

To make the filling

Cut mushrooms into small dices and then finely chop garlic, ginger and scallion. Mix 1 tablespoon of cornstarch with 1.5 tablespoon of water. Set aside.

Heat oil in wok, fry garlic, ginger and scallion until aromatic. Then place the mushroom dices in. Fry for 2 minutes until the mushrooms are softened, add five spice powder, salt, light soy sauce and sesame oil. Simmer for another 2 minutes. Stir the starch water in advance and place in it. Mix well. Heat until the sauce is slightly thickened.

Wrap well. I use homemade dumpling wrappers, you can use store bought ones or make it at home. By the way, if you need help about how to wrap dumplings, check here.

Place in a non-stick pan, add some oil and fry until one side becomes crispy, sprinkle some water (just a small amount because the filling is already cooked in advance), then fry the dumplings until crispy and hardened once again.

Lovely filling. Serve it with a dipping sauce.