The Language of Gyoza

When you round the corner into the kitchen on Gyoza Day, expect to be met with the aromatic smell of leeks in the air and the loud chopping of cabbage. The one thing you won’t hear: words. 

Living with a language barrier between you and someone you call family is something, I believe, is a unique experience. It opens up the door to expressing your love in ways other than words. For me, that expression came in the form of folding dumplings for hours at a time with my grandmother.

For some context, 10 years ago, my father remarried into a Japanese family. Subsequently, I gained another set of extended relatives who I couldn’t be more different from, or so I thought. The first time I met my grandmother was odd, to say the least. Neither of us spoke the same language, so we had to use my stepmother as a translator. But, a couple of hours after our awkward introduction, we decided to make some gyoza as a family. My grandmother took me through all the steps, everything from making the filling to the notoriously difficult but entertaining folding process. 

Fast forward to 2022, I had moved to Tokyo, Japan, for my sophomore year of high school. A couple of days after the official move, I was still suffering from the aftereffects of jet lag, and I woke up to find my grandmother in the kitchen with a huge smile and all the ingredients to make gyoza lying out on the kitchen counter. All of a sudden, my tiredness had disappeared, and I grabbed my knife out of the cabinet to start chopping some cabbage and leeks.

For me, the fun part about making gyoza is that nothing in the process is an exact science: a true family recipe. Every batch comes out differently, and the beauty of the dish isn’t in the consistent quality; it’s in the poorly folded, slightly messed-up dumplings you make while learning how to master the folding technique.

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GYOZA recipe

Courtesy of Billy Hayes 

Ingredients:

• ½ lb ground pork

• 1 small head of green cabbage (finely chopped)

• 2 cloves garlic (finely chopped)

• 1 leek (finely chopped)

• Thumb of ginger (finely chopped)

• A little bit of sugar (about 2 tsp)

• Salt

• Pepper

• Splash of soy sauce

• Splash of mirin

• 50 circular premade gyoza wrappers

Instructions:

1. Finely chop your cabbage and keep it separate from the rest of your ingredients. 

2. Add a good bit of salt to your finely chopped cabbage: 5-6 large pinches. Let your cabbage sit for about 5 minutes. Then, squeeze out all the moisture from it over a sink, but be sure to squeeze extra hard to extract all the moisture before you place the squeezed cabbage in a separate bowl. 

3. Combine pork, garlic, ginger, a pinch of salt and pepper, seasonings, and sauces in a bowl and mix thoroughly. 

4. Add the squeezed cabbage and finely chopped leeks into the pork mixture and combine them until a homogeneous mixture is formed. I prefer doing this all with my hands. Mix until your mixture begins sticking to your hands. 

5. Let the gyoza filling rest in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes or until ready to fold into dumplings.

6. Take a small spoonful, just smaller than a tablespoon, and place it into the center of a gyoza wrapper. Note: thinner wrappers are better than thick wrappers.

7. Dip your finger in some water and trace it around the edge of the wrapper around the filling. Then, carefully seal the edges of the gyoza to form a seal that’ll hold up in cooking. 

[Makes 50 dumplings]

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As with any family recipe, the measurements don’t have to be exact. In fact, this one was made with approximations. Feel free to add any other sauces and/or seasonings to the filling to make it unique.

After some practice, and maybe some YouTube tutorials, your folding skills will get better and better. I have made gyoza only a handful of times with my grandmother. When I moved back to the United States, I brought my experience with me. I haven't had the chance to see her since I’ve been back, but I’ve been able to feel her whenever I make gyoza. It becomes a group affair every time I reach the folding step. I invite friends, family, and everyone I know who isn’t busy. I teach the technique of gyoza folding and forge connections in the process.

Everything I’ve taken away from my gyoza adventures is because of a language barrier. I couldn’t speak the same language as my grandmother, so we spoke through food. That's the beauty of cuisine: you don’t need to have much in common with the person you share it with, you just have to have a passion for food.