Vegetarian Chinese Dumplings

For Superbowl Sunday, I always make Chinese Dumplings. I've written about them before when the kids were young, then shared the full recipe three years ago.

This year, I experimented with a vegetarian filling. My son has been eating vegetarian for a few months and he loves dumplings, so I attempted to make them as close to the meat version.

To accomplish this, I used all the same ingredients as the traditional meat filling - shiitake mushrooms, green onion, spinach, garlic, ginger, soy sauce, sesame oil - while substituting in seasoned tofu for the ground pork.

For the tofu, I marinated super-firm tofu cubes in a mixture of soy sauce, garlic sauce, sesame oil and cornstarch. I recently found Nasoya Super Firm Sprouted tofu in the local market and it is perfect for replicating some of the texture of meat. After marinating them overnight, I pan fried them so that the cubes develop a crispy crust:


The cubes are good for snacking on, too. Side note - use any marinade on the tofu cubes to change up the flavor. Some ideas - BBQ sauce, Chipotle sauce, Buffalo Wing Sauce.

I cut the tofu cubes into smaller pieces and added it to the other ingredients:

I also incorporated an egg into the mixture as a binder. Wrap and cook just like the meat version.

The finished dumpling:


They won the approval of my son, so I call that a success.