To my delight, my brother has taken pity on me and sent me a dumpling press. 

I never even thought about something like this, what an excellent idea.  And as happens, I was at Fred Meyer the other day and picked up a pack of gyoza skins.  My failure to create a half decent pot sticker was on definitely on my mind.

So, tomorrow we have a pot sticker redux.  In the meantime, thanks Keith and Iain for the neat kitchen tool. 

For our New Years Eve dinner we went Chinese (rather I attempted to go Chinese). The other day while aimlessly wandering through the web, hitting favorite sites, I hit upon a pot sticker recipe at myrecipes.com It looked simple enough that even I could handle it so I plucked it and added to my digital cookbook.

This morning I decided that I would try the pot stickers along with another favorite of ours Beef-Broccoli Lo Mein.  This is another easy recipe from Cooking Light.  While the Lo Mein was a success,  the pot stickers were good but obviously a first attempt.

The first problem was that the local grocery store (what was I thinking? I live in a rural town 30 miles north of Spokane) did not have the required gyoza skins, so I had to settle on won ton skins which are thinner and square where qyoza skins are round.  Gyoza skins are thicker that won ton skins which I think would have improved the cooking of them.   I burnt the bottoms and they were a little dry, the pan was too darn hot.  But these were cooking errors not errors in  preparation.  I still have more to cook and will let you know if my cooking skill improves.

So for my next batch of pot stickers I will need to plan ahead and find some gyoza skins.

Here is a quick link to both recipes:
Beef-Broccoli Lo Mein
Pork Pot Stickers

For New Years Day,  I have planned something more traditional Beef Stew.

Have a safe and Happy New Years!