Mushroom Filled Dumplings

As you probably know from my Facebook story, I have been infinite yoghurt glitching (where basically you save a bit of your yoghurt before it finishes, you boil milk and then add the yoghurt to it, wrap the pot in a towel for five or six hours and you'll have more yoghurt) and I'm also trying to keep everything as processing-free as possible. These dumplings have no ultra-processed ingredients in them and when I tried them (as someone who actually hates dumplings) I almost cried - they were so damn good. So I'm going to be feeding them to my mother for lunch today!

Of course it's all vegan...

Here's the recipe!

Mushroom Filled Dumplings

Ingredients:

• 250g Chestnut Mushrooms
• 250g Plain Flour
• 2x Tbsp Apple Sauce
• 1x Average Glass of Water
• 1x Tsp Salt
• 1x Tsp Olive Oil

How To:

1. Grab the oil and heat it in a pan, chop your mushrooms into tiny pieces and cook them on a high heat so that they soften up completely. Once cooked, leave them aside to cool whilst you make your dough
2. Mix together the salt and flour, making sure they are combined (do this with your hands, it's easier)
3. Add the apple sauce and mix again so that the apple sauce is fully combined
4. Slowly add the water until a dough forms (it is going to be a very wet dough so be aware)
5. Flour up a surface, roll out your dough to half the thickness of your iPhone and cut it into circles
6. This dough is going to try and spring back into smaller shapes and thus it is important to form the circles with your hands too by gently pressing the dough out. Don't worry if the circles get bigger, this is meant to happen if you want to stop the dough from getting smaller
7. Grab a small spoon and your mushrooms and place half of a small spoon worth of mushroom mix on to each circle of dough. It is easier to put it in the middle, trust me on this
8. Fold the circles together and, with the back of a fork, press them closed like you'd do the outside of a pie or a pasty
9. Boil some water in the pan where you once cooked the mushrooms (I would recommend doing this in a pan because you don't want the dumplings sticking to each other. A pan means they have ample room to cook on both sides)
10. When the water starts to bubble from the boiling, place each dumpling carefully into the water and drop the heat slightly to medium
11. Allow the dumplings to boil for around ten to fifteen minutes on this medium heat, you should see the tops of them start to expand slightly
12. Once they're done, place them on a plate, spread out so that they can have room to themselves and finish with an optional sprinkling of chives

Optional Additions

Of course, this recipe is malleable. You can add things to your mushrooms such as green chillis and/or other vegetables. I would not recommend adding vegeatbles though that will cause more water in your dumplings such as courgettes or aubergines - this may break the dumpling depending on how thick you roll the dough and the batter might not cook properly in the water.

You can also make a sweet version by using chopped and glazed apples with honey instead of mushrooms, creating little apple dumpling desserts. If you want something a bit crisper, you can air-fry or fry them instead of boiling them and they'll do just that. You can even put them into the oven to bake at 200/C for 10-15 minutes. If you're feeling like a treat, you can even stuff them with potato and deep fry them for some crispy potato dumplings. Seriously, you can literally do anything with them.

If you're feeling super adventurous though, instead of making the dumpling shape, you can cut them into any shape you feel like, make the veggies separate and boil the shaped dough for 15 minutes and thus, you've got yourself some homemade pasta. I told you it was malleable. I absolutely adore this particular dough because it cooks so damn well.

Here's one more. Swap the plain flour for 00 flour and use the exact same of everything else, top with cheese, tomatoes and veggies after rolling it out into one big circle, bake at 200/C for half an hour and...PIZZA!