Authentic Korean Mandu

Chop up the Napa cabbage into small pieces. Do not include the spines. Place in a bowl.

Chop up the Chinese chives finely. Place in a bowl with the cabbage.

Cut firm tofu block in half. Crumble into a bowl with the above ingredients.

Place both the ground beef and pork into the bowl.

After cleaning the garlic and ginger, mince both ingredients and place them in the bowl.

Crack the egg and place it in the middle of the bowl.

Now drizzle all the ingredients with soy sauce and sesame seed oil. To be honest, I eyeball it. But I like the hurricane method; start on the outside rim and go in circles until you reach the centre.

Mix all the ingredients together by hand! You may need to break up the tofu a little more than the initial crumble.

Now set the mixture aside, and set up your dumpling-making station. Line each baking sheet with wax paper. Clean off your cutting board, and place the small bowl filled with warm water in the upper corner. Unwrap your dumpling wrappers, and get ready to make dumplings! Also, before you start wrapping dumplings, it is essential to make sure your cutting board is dry. Otherwise, your dumplings wrappers will get soggy and become unworkable.

Take a wrapper and place it on the board. Make a ping pong-sized ball of the mixture in your hand. Put into the centre of the dumpling wrapper. Dip your index finger in the warm water, and moisten half the outside rim of the wrapper. Now fold over the wrapper, and pinch it together. Push from the filling outward with your finger to make sure all the air is out. Place newly formed dumplings on the baking sheet.

Pour an entire bottle of oil into a saucepan.

Place on stove over medium heat. Heat the oil heat for about 5 to 7 minutes.

Check the oil temperature by placing the edge of a dumpling into the oil. If it starts to bubble within a couple of seconds, drop the dumpling into the oil. Otherwise, turn up your heat slightly and wait a couple more minutes.

Once dumplings turn a golden brown colour, pull from oil and serve.

Mix soy sauce and rice wine vinegar.

Add salt and roasted sesame seeds.

Cut Thai chillies on a bias, and add to mixture.

Whisk together.

Drizzle the mixture with sesame seed oil to taste.