Baked Chinese Dumplings Super Easy Viral

Recipe: Baked Chinese Dumplings Recipe »

These baked Chinese dumplings are a fantastic one pan dinner. Frozen dumplings are baked in a creamy Thai red curry coconut sauce with broccoli or whatever vegetables you like. Super easy to prepare, great to serve with rice or noodles and perfect for busy weeknights or meal prep!

About These Baked Chinese Dumplings

This super easy one pan dumpling bake came from a Tiktoker Daniella from Healthy Girl Kitchen. It's a very simple dish where frozen dumplings are cooked in a Thai red curry and coconut sauce with vegetables. This is the ultimate one pan meal because you have your protein, carbs and veggies all in the one pan! This is a great alternative to steamed dumplings.

Reasons why you just have to try these baked Chinese dumplings:

a) These baked dumplings are great for meal prepping or to take to work for lunch.

b) This recipe gives the perfect amount of sauce to serve with steamed rice or noodles. I steam the rice or cook the noodles while the dumplings are cooking.

c) This recipe can be easily scaled and doubled so that you can feed 4 people. Or quadruple it and bake two tray's worth (it's that good).

d) This recipe is easily made vegan or plant based. All you have to do is use vegan dumplings and replace the fish sauce with soy sauce!

e) This recipe can be made gluten free if you find gluten free dumplings.

Video How To Make Baked Chinese Dumplings

Step by Step Video: How to Make Baked Chinese Dumplings

Ingredients for Baked Chinese Dumplings

Coconut milk - Use regular coconut milk and not light as the texture of the sauce is much better with regular coconut milk.

Red curry paste - Go for a Thai curry paste brand to ensure that it is robustly flavoured. I use Mae Ploy curry paste as it's a robustly flavoured curry paste from Thailand. All curry pastes do need additional seasoning added to them like fish sauce, sugar etc.

Fish sauce - This adds a salty seasoning to curries. Vietnamese fish sauce like Red Boat is good but very pricey but Thai fish sauce like Squid is also good.

Sugar - plain old white sugar or palm sugar if you're feeling fancy! ;)

Garlic cloves - fresh garlic cloves, crushed or minced.

Ginger - fresh ginger grated or jarred minced ginger. Not ginger powder (it won't be strong enough).

Rice vinegar - This is a mild, sweet vinegar made from fermented rice used to balance the sweet, salty flavours.

Broccoli - One head of fresh broccoli is perfect for 2 people.

Frozen dumplings - any filling you like, these were prawn dumplings.

Garnishes - I use these and you can use all 4 or a mix of them: green onions or shallots, fresh coriander leaves, crispy shallots, toasted sesame seeds and chilli oil.

Tips For Making Baked Chinese Dumplings

1 - You can swap out red curry paste for another colour like green curry paste or yellow curry paste. Or try using massaman paste if you prefer a milder, sweeter sauce.

2 - Each curry paste is different so taste the mixture once all of the seasonings are added and see if it needs a bit more sugar, vinegar or fish sauce. I usually add some more chilli to mine too.

3 - I used Aldi frozen prawn dumplings (not sponsored!). One 750g/26oz bag is enough for 4 people (2 serves of this). Or you can make the gyoza from scratch.

Video How To Make Cut Perfect Broccoli Florets

Step by Step Video: How to Make Cut Perfect Broccoli Every Time!

4 - I used broccoli for this but you can use any other green vegetables like baby spinach, green beans cut into inch long pieces, bok choy cut into pieces, kale or asparagus. I'll also show you how to cut broccoli into perfect florets! Seriously, the broccoli is designed perfectly and will tell you where to cut it!

5 - I like to use frozen dumplings because the broccoli cooks perfectly with this timing. However if you have thawed or fresh dumplings you can cook this for 20 minutes covered and then 5 minutes uncovered. I would also suggest replacing the broccoli with chopped up bok choy or baby spinach instead both of which take less time to cook.

6 - I find light coconut milk tends to split and becomes really watery so regular coconut milk works best for this.

7 - I used a lidded casserole dish but if you want to make a really big batch of this you can use a 30x20/12x8inch baking dish too. Just cover it with foil instead of a lid.

8 - Don't worry if the dumplings look pale and unappetising before you do the final bake uncovered. The first step steam bakes the dumplings so that they don't dry out and then the second bake where the dish is uncovered browns them.

9 - I would say that this serves 2-3 people - 2 people if you're like Mr NQN and I. He always eats much more than me so it's ideal for one very hungry and one moderately hungry person! ;)

Baked Chinese Dumplings Recipe

An Original Recipe by Lorraine Elliott

Recipe Overview

Preparation time: 5-7 minutes

Cooking time: 35 minutes

Serves: 2-3 people

Ingredients Needed

• 400g/14floz coconut milk (full fat is best)
• 40g/1.4ozs red curry paste
• 3 tablespoons/45ml/1.6flozs fish sauce
• 1.5 tablespoons sugar
• 3 garlic cloves, crushed
• 2 teaspoons minced ginger
• 2 teaspoons rice vinegar
• 1 head broccoli (around 300g/10.6ozs), cut into florets
• 375g/13ozs frozen dumplings (or as many as can fit in your casserole or baking dish)
• Green onions, coriander, toasted sesame seeds and chilli oil to garnish

Step-By-Step Instructions

Step 1 MIX - Preheat oven to 170C/340F fan forced or 190C/374F conventional and have a large casserole dish (3.5L or 3.6quart) or baking dish ready. In the dish, whisk the coconut milk, red curry paste, fish sauce, sugar, garlic, ginger and rice vinegar with a silicon covered whisk (metal will scratch the casserole's surface). OR you can whisk all of the sauce ingredients in a jug and then pour it over the vegetables and dumplings. Make sure to check for seasoning if it needs a bit more sugar, fish sauce or vinegar to balance it.

Step 2 BAKE - Place the broccoli florets in the sauce and then place the dumplings around the broccoli. Spoon the sauce over the broccoli and the dumplings and then cover with a lid or foil. Bake for 25 minutes. Remove the lid and bake for another 10 minutes.

Step 3 GARNISH - Dress the dumplings with chopped green onions, coriander leaves, toasted sesame seeds and drizzle with chilli crisp oil.

Substitution notes and ingredients:

You can sub the coconut milk for evaporated milk.

If you want to keep this vegan, you can replace the fish sauce with soy sauce

Replace the rice vinegar or another mild vinegar like apple cider vinegar, sherry vinegar, white wine vinegar or champagne vinegar. Otherwise you can also use lime juice.

Personal Note

I made these on a very lazy weekend. Lately, I've started trying to schedule very little to on weekends and I had a whole weekend where I had nothing on. This weekend happened serendipitously as plans for Saturday night dinner were moved to the night before.

Doing nothing wasn't 100% true, I was working and photographing and filming recipes on both Saturday and Sunday, but I didn't have to technically leave the house except to walk the dogs with Mr NQN. Plus it was gloriously sunny and since we got rid of the moth plague, I love nothing more than lying in the bed watching tv with the windows open and the sun streaming in. I'm sure this is what they mean by "rotting in bed".

By Saturday night, I looked outside and wished that I was going out. "I have a whole weekend where I have nothing to do," I told Sammie. She responded that if she knew me I'd go somewhere because I get so stir crazy. I didn't have the heart to tell her that I had already told Mr NQN that we were going out for lunch the following day! But following that I was back at home, making these dumplings for the easiest ever dinner!

So tell me Dear Reader, do you enjoy rotting in bed? Have you ever baked dumplings?

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