Introduction: For stuffed foods like buns and dumplings, if you blindly pursue "thin skin with lots of filling," they lose their status as a staple food. This can lead to insufficient carbohydrate intake 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 dumpling skin. This not only increases the intake of minerals, B vitamins, and dietary fiber but also enriches the texture and flavor. However, it's important to note that the proportion of these additions should be kept below 20%.
Smart Eating for Dumplings: Master These Points for Balanced Nutrition
Even ground meat filling should be chopped again.
Even non-injected ground meat has poor water absorption. This is because meat is composed of muscle fibers, and the key component that absorbs water and forms a cohesive mass is myosin. However, ground meat is often not finely chopped, so the myosin isn't released, preventing it from absorbing water and making the filling sticky. Therefore, already ground meat filling should be chopped again. This results in better water absorption and a richer umami flavor.
Lean meat as the main ingredient, use less fatty meat.
Many people are used to adding more fatty meat when making dumplings, believing 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 helps reduce the intake of saturated fat and calories, achieving true nutritional balance. Thus, it is recommended to use less fatty meat in the filling, focusing on lean meat, and to avoid adding animal or vegetable oil.
Add dried vegetables to retain vegetable juice.
When chopping vegetables like napa cabbage or chives into small pieces, a large amount of juice is released. The traditional practice is to squeeze out the juice to prevent the dumplings from losing their shape. However, this method causes the loss of vitamins in the vegetables, missing out on their most precious nutritional essence. To retain the vegetable juice, you can chop the vegetables along with some water-absorbing ingredients, such as dried seaweed, dried kelp, or dried shiitake mushrooms. These ingredients are often high in fiber and can help reduce cholesterol absorption.