The Type Of Pork You Should Avoid For Actually Tasty Dumplings

You're craving dumplings and this looks like a good week to make some Korean mandu, gyoza, or wontons. Before you do, be sure to avoid one of the biggest mistakes that will ruin your homemade dumplings – using lean cuts of pork instead of fattier cuts. By lean pork, we mean cuts like the loin, or the area between the pig's shoulder and hind legs. The loin, which includes pork chops, has a low amount of fat. If you've cooked pork chops before, you've probably notice they get less juicy and dry if you overcook them. 

Homemade dumplings often require mincing pork to make the filling, then steaming, boiling, or pan frying the morsels. This cooking process can easily overcook and dry out minced pieces of leaner pork. The result? Crumbly, tough, dry pork in the mouth. When you make dumplings, you want a cohesive filling. Leaner cuts of pork make it harder for the filling to come together, even with the help of a binder like eggs. 

The solution here is to avoid leaner cuts of pork and stick with fattier cuts like pork shoulder, pork belly, or our favorite cut to use for dumplings, the extra fatty pork jowl, cut from the cheek area. This cut of meat is thoroughly marbled with fat and very light pink. 

When you use fattier cuts of pork to make dumpling filling, the fat and moisture in the meat helps the rest of the filling bind together and not fall apart when you're assembling your gyoza, pork wontons, siu mai, or jiaozi. You also don't have to worry if you overcook the dumplings. Fattier pork will still be juicy, tender, and richly flavorful even if you accidentally over-steam, over-boil, or over-fry the dumplings. 

One often enjoys dumplings with sauce. That savory sauce that pork dumplings are often served with usually has an acidic component, like rice or red wine vinegar. The tangy sauce helps cut through the rich fat of the fatty pork filling, and fat and acid complement each other. Acid helps slice through the richness of fat, while the fat in the pork helps mellow out the tanginess in your tongue. The lack of fat in leaner pork prevents it from tempering vinegar's sharpness. 

Thus, the next time you're ready to make some dumplings be sure to pick up fattier pork. You can also ask for some lard, as dumpling masters also sometimes add bits of pig fat to their dumpling fillings to add even more richness and flavor.