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If you don’t have time to prepare a homemade dumpling recipe, picking out your favorite brand of frozen dumplings is a shortcut to enjoying the tastes you love. There are several different ways to prepare your favorite frozen dumplings with plenty of hacks to make restaurant-quality meals. Luckily, one of the fastest ways to cook frozen dumplings also happens to be the most ideal for maintaining the correct texture.
Provided you take care to ensure that they are cooked all the way through, you can steam dumplings straight out of the freezer. This streamlined process takes around 10 minutes, requires minimal ingredients and equipment, and preserves the consistency of your food. Rather than boiling a whole pot of water, you can simply boil a few cups of water in a wok and use a bamboo steamer insert, like Helen’s Asian Kitchen premium bamboo steamer ring, to warm up your dumplings.
The many benefits to this method include a quicker cook time and a more tender overall mouthfeel. Rather than pan frying, which will crisp up the skin, or boiling, which will make it too soft, steaming frozen dumplings keeps some pliability and firmness in the outer wrapper of the dumplings. You can use this method with just about any store-bought dumplings you like, and there are a myriad of ways you can build a satisfying meal around this frozen food.
Making a picture perfect plate of dumplings
Whether you favor beef, chicken, pork, shrimp, or vegetables, your frozen dumplings will highly benefit from the speed and efficiency of steaming. Depending on your taste preferences, you can create a complementary side dish for a fully-fledged meal. If time is of the essence, you can easily use canned or frozen sides to prepare alongside your dumplings.
For example, reuse your steamer setup with a bag of frozen green beans to fully warm them up. Top this veggie side with a generous helping of Mr Bing Chili Crisp and serve them as the perfect accompaniment to a dish of beef dumplings. Veggie dumplings almost always pair well with a fresh green salad or marinated seaweed salad for a delightful interplay of flavor and texture.
You can also prepare a quick miso soup in less than 15 minutes to pair with your favorite chicken or pork dumplings. A simple batch of fried rice would also go particularly well with your favorite steamed shrimp dumplings. Dumplings can be an easy appetizer or entree that quickly go from frozen to fantastic with low effort and yield great taste.