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Hello friends, especially foodies!

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Hello friends, especially foodies!

After sharing some of our food adventures, today I'd like to share something different. This time, we're bringing a little Korean food into our kitchen!
Have you ever tried making Korean dumplings at home?

Well, this was our first attempt at making homemade mandu. I found a recipe that looked interesting, so I decided to give it a try. Fortunately, I wasn't alone in the kitchen. Papa joined me and helped with wrapping and cooking the dumplings.
It turned out to be a fun little activity for both of us!

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Preparing the Ingredients
For this recipe, I used ground beef, Korean glass noodles, white tofu, and several vegetables. I also bought special Korean mandu wrappers to make the preparation easier.

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Here are the ingredients we needed.
Ingredients for the filling:
200 g ground beef
2 leaves of Chinese cabbage (napa cabbage)
150 g cooked Korean glass noodles (dangmyeon)
115 g white tofu
4 stalks of chives
2 stalks of spring onions
1 onion
3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
½ tsp grated ginger
Seasonings:
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp ground pepper
1 tsp mushroom stock powder
1 tbsp palm sugar
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp fish sauce
1 tsp sesame oil
2–3 tbsp cooking oil
Other ingredients:
Korean mandu wrappers
100 ml water
1 tbsp cooking oil

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How to Make Homemade Mandu

1. Prepare the vegetables and glass noodles

First, chop the Chinese cabbage, onion, spring onions, and chives into small pieces. Finely chop the garlic.

Meanwhile, cook the Korean glass noodles until soft. Drain them and cut them into shorter pieces using scissors.

For the tofu, simply mash it with a fork until it becomes crumbly.

1. Sauté the vegetables

Heat the cooking oil in a pan. Add the chopped garlic and onion, then sauté until fragrant.
Next, add the spring onions, chives, and Chinese cabbage. Stir-fry everything until the vegetables soften.
Remove the vegetables from the pan and let them cool before mixing them with the other ingredients.

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1. Prepare the filling

In a large mixing bowl, combine the ground beef, cooked glass noodles, mashed tofu, and sautéed vegetables.
Add the grated ginger, salt, pepper, mushroom stock powder, palm sugar, soy sauce, fish sauce, and sesame oil.
Mix everything until well combined.
Now our mandu filling is ready!

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1. Wrap the mandu

This was the part where my husband joined me!
Place a spoonful of filling in the centre of a Korean mandu wrapper. Fold the wrapper in half and press the edges together firmly to seal the filling inside.
We made simple half-moon-shaped dumplings.
Wrapping them was quite fun, although getting the shapes to look neat took a little practice. Haha!
It was nice to have my husband helping me with this part. Making dumplings together turned out to be a little family activity rather than just another cooking project.

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1. Cook the mandu

Here comes the interesting part!

We decided to experiment with two different cooking methods to see how they would turn out.

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First method: Pan-fried mandu

Heat a little cooking oil in a pan and arrange the mandu inside.
Add some water, cover the pan, and let them cook until the water evaporates.
Continue cooking until the bottoms become golden brown.
The result was lovely! The wrappers remained soft and slightly chewy, with crispy golden bottoms. They reminded me of ordinary dumplings.

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Second method: Fried mandu

For the remaining dumplings, we tried frying them in oil.
This gave us a completely different result. The wrappers became golden brown and much crispier.
Both methods worked well, but the textures were quite different.

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Our Homemade Mandu Results

Finally, our homemade Korean mandu was ready!

We ended up with two different versions.
The pan-fried mandu had softer wrappers and a slightly crispy bottom, while the fried version had a much crispier exterior.
Personally, I think both methods have their own appeal. If you prefer soft and chewy dumplings, pan-frying is a good choice. However, if you enjoy crunchy food, the fried version might be more suitable.
It really depends on individual taste.
I'm happy with how our first homemade mandu turned out. The filling was a combination of beef, tofu, vegetables, and Korean glass noodles, making it quite interesting.
More importantly, I enjoyed the process of preparing everything together with Papa.
Sometimes, cooking at home isn't just about the food we make. It's also about the little moments we share while preparing it.

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Thanks for reading my article! If you enjoyed my article, please upvote, reblog, follow me, and stay tuned for more CRAFT things from me!

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All of the pictures were taken with a Samsung A52 5G Android phone.

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A bit about the author

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