I love dumplings. Potstickers, ravioli, pierogies, anything of the like. When I studied in Ecuador, one of the first things our adviser warned against was eating street food. That admonition lasted exactly as long as the time it took for me to discover that a freshly made roadside cheese empanada cost 25 cents. In college, while others were eating grilled cheese, Ramen noodles (not the good kind) or worse, my roommate Renee and I were dipping strawberry pierogies in sour cream mixed with sugar. A first-generation American, Renee (aka Renata) had grown up on this particular brand of awesomeness, with her Polish mother expending her culinary energy on to-die-for breaded porkchops.
Considering my love of filled foods, I was quite excited to see a sampling of CJ Foods dumplings on my porch upon arriving home one day. A few days later, upon spying my new treasures in the freezer, my husband decided to cook up a bag. Like me, he’s not really one for reading directions, and he dumped the contents of the bag into a pot of boiling water. Please don’t try this at home. I say this not for your sake, but for the sake of the dumplings. Or if you do, don’t then boil the dumplings for 8 minutes. The whole point of these is that they are already cooked.
The result of letting my husband take the reins was quite un-dumpling-like. Imagine wontons without filling, disintegrating meatballs and, upon cooling, one giant sticky mess. Posting a picture of this madness seemed unfair considering that it was our fault, not the dumplings’. Fortunately, we had another flavor to try, so don’t worry, this near Friday-you-know-what has a happy ending.
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