This past week I made the Vegetarian Eggplant, Mushroom, and Carrot Filling for Dumplings recipe from J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook.

This is the only vegetarian filling recipe in the section, and Kenji notes the difficulty of vegetarian dumplings:

vegetable-based fillings often feel like a collection of bits and pieces held together by the dumpling skin alone

Kenji’s approach to solve this is using steamed eggplant as a “moisture-retaining” binder for the dumplings and notes that he uses a similar technique for his turkey burgers in The Food Lab.

To make this filling, first Chinese eggplant chunks are steamed until tender. Then carrot, mushrooms, ginger, and scallions are stir-fried. Shaoxing wine, light and dark soy sauces, fermented black beans, and miso paste are added and stir-fried until incorporated.

At this point the steamed eggplant is added and mashed in. I was shocked at how the eggplant just disintegrated into the mixture. What results is a gloop of vegetables. The gloop gets refrigerated until completely cooled.

The wrapping went well. This was my third time using Kenji’s homemade dumpling wrapper recipe, and I think I’m getting the hang of it. The vegetable mixture wrapped better than some of the meat fillings, I think because it was less chunky but still cohesive.

I got enough dumplings made to freeze 13, steam 18 (half of which I then pan-fried), and gave another try at dumpwings with 9. This time with the dumpwings I noticed that Kenji calls for water, corn starch or tapioca starch, and flour. I had missed this the last time. My pan was 12 inches wide, for which Kenji directs to double the starch slurry. I think with 9 in the pan, that was too much slurry. It took a very long time to cook into a crunch layer, burning the bottom of the dumplings in the process. So I’m still working on my dumpwing preparation.

As these were vegetarian, my daughter was able to eat them. She tried one, but didn’t like it. My son ate his share, but much preferred the meat-filled dumplings. I thought they tasted good, but the softness of the filling meant that the dumplings just collapsed on taking a bite and filling would squeeze out, versus maintaining their shape with meat-based fillings.

Since my daughter won’t eat these, I don’t see a reason to make them again. Unless I’m entertaining some vegetarian friends.

Overall, this dumpling section was one of my family’s best received.

I am cooking my way through J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook. Read more about it.