"Lying down is more comfortable than sitting, and dumplings are more delicious than any other food." For Chinese people who love wheat-based foods, stuffed foods like buns and dumplings have always been the stars of the dining table. But how can we make these stuffed foods both delicious and healthy?
Don't go for thin skin with a large filling.
For stuffed foods like buns and dumplings, if you blindly pursue "thin skin with a large filling," they lose their status as a staple food. This can easily lead to an insufficient intake of carbohydrates while consuming too much meat, which is not conducive to a balanced diet. Additionally, you can add various coarse grain powders and bean powders to the dough. This not only increases the intake of minerals, B vitamins, and dietary fiber but also enriches the texture and flavor. However, it should be noted that the proportion of these additives should be kept below 20%.
Colorful Pepper and Fresh Meat Dumplings
Even ground meat filling should be chopped again.
Even for meat that hasn't been injected with water, ground meat filling doesn't absorb water well. This is because meat is composed of muscle fibers, and the key component that actually absorbs water and helps it form a cohesive mass is myosin. However, ground meat filling is often not chopped finely enough, so the myosin isn't released, and it can't perform its water-absorbing function to make the filling properly sticky. Therefore, it's best to chop the already ground meat filling again. This will not only improve its water absorption but also make its flavor more intense.
Lean meat as the main ingredient, use less fatty meat.
Many people are used to adding more fatty meat when making dumplings, thinking it tastes better. However, fatty meat often has a high content of saturated fat, which is unhealthy for you. Furthermore, according to the principle of acid-base balance in the diet, "acidic" meat should be balanced with "alkaline" vegetable ingredients. Therefore, it's best to pair one part meat with two parts vegetables. Increasing the amount of vegetables is the way to reduce the intake of saturated fat and calories to achieve true nutritional balance. Therefore, it is recommended to use less fatty meat in the filling, focusing on lean meat, and it's best not to add any animal or vegetable oil.
Broth Dumplings
Add some dried vegetables to retain the vegetable juice.
When chopping vegetables like napa cabbage or chives into small pieces, a lot of juice is also released. The traditional habit is to squeeze out the juice to prevent the dumplings from losing their shape. However, this practice causes the vitamins in the vegetables to be lost, missing out on their most precious nutritional essence. To retain the vegetable juice, you can chop the vegetables together with some water-absorbing ingredients, such as dried seaweed, dried wakame, or dried shiitake mushrooms. These ingredients are often also high-fiber配料 that can help reduce the absorption of cholesterol.