Rainy day mandu!

Happy Belated New Year! I have been making dumplings for new year festivities and had a whole pack of wrappers and some ingredients left over. Reluctant to make the same type of dumplings for the fourth time, I decided to go with Korean mandu. Mandu is the word for dumpling, and its fillings are a little different.

When my sister and I were making dumplings at her house, she mentioned mandu and even showed me how to fold it. I like how there's usually kimchee in there and how I can put in more filling using the rounder "half-moon fold." Plus, I always have kimchee in the fridge. I had two kinds: the white version (non-spicy) and kkakdugi (radish). The white version was kind of old, so I used the kkakdugi. I put a cup's worth of it in my Magic Bullet blender, removed most of the liquid, and blended it. I then used this recipe as a guideline while substituting a cup of tofu with more ground turkey, the diced cabbage kimchee with the blended kkakdugi, and the bean sprouts for salted cabbage. I left out the dangmyeon noodles and gochugaru because I didn't have any. I added gochujang paste.

I hope I don't get scolded by an ajumma for all the substitutes, but I really wanted kimchee in a dumpling and to shape it cute. I asked my friend MJ, and she said that mandu doesn't always have kimchee so I'm guessing there are many types!

I used up the whole pack of potsticker dumplings from Ranch 99, filling and folding each mandu while listening to a podcast.

In the end, I steamed some in the Instant Pot and froze the rest. Here is the IP version I used from the Aloha IP Community group: pour 1 cup of water into the IP, glaze the trivet with oil (I used sesame), place dumplings on trivet, then set to high pressure for 5 minutes with natural release.

They came out pretty well, the kimchee flavor came through, and I didn't need a dipping sauce. I ate 3 for this blog and will have the rest for lunch tomorrow.