Vegan Dumplings Recipe Chinese

Homemade dumplings are one of those things that require some time to make, but you’ll find them totally worth the effort. This vegan dumplings recipe was developed based on our family recipe, handed down from my grandma to my mom. But I’ve made some changes with plenty of recipe notes, so you can easily adapt it with more common ingredients. The dumpling filling has a well-balanced texture with veggies, tofu, and vermicelli. It’s seasoned with plenty of aromatics, soy sauce, and just a dash of curry powder to enhance its richness. My husband described its flavor as “Singapore noodles in dumpling form”.

In a previous post, I mentioned that our daily diet has shifted to mostly plant-based food after my husband started his vegan blog Gastroplant. I still cook with meat and dairy here and there, especially when I develop Chinese recipes for my blog. But so far I’m very happy with the plant-based diet. I feel more energetic and less heavy during the day. And I noticed that I crave fast food much less nowadays.

Vegan dumplings are our favorite snack and quick lunch fix. Sometimes we buy them from the Asian market. But when I want some really good dumplings, I prefer to make them at home. Yes it does take some time to wrap the dumplings. But if you make a big batch ahead and freeze them, it will be so easy to heat them up for a quick snack.

The Best Damn Vegan Dumplings With Easy Peanut Sauce

In a perfect world, you would use fresh homemade dumpling wrappers every time. The real advantage of homemade wrappers is, they’re bigger than the store-bought type and easier to wrap. Different from meat filling, vegan dumpling filling doesn’t bind together as well. So it will be a bit of a challenge to wrap a lot of ingredients into each dumpling if using store-bought wrappers. If you have the time, I highly recommend using this recipe to make wrappers for steamed or pan-fried dumplings. If you want to make boiled dumplings, use the cold-water dough from this recipe to make the wrappers.

Of course, you can use store-bought wrappers if you’re short on time. Try to find wrappers that are slightly bigger in size if possible. Store-bought dumpling wrappers can be a bit dry and difficult to wrap sometimes. I usually wet a few layers of paper towel and cover the wrappers when I work on the dumplings. This helps the wrappers stay pliable.

The goal of this recipe is to create a filling with a balanced texture that is rich enough to serve by itself without dipping sauce.

Potstickers 5 Ways (vegan Dumpling Recipe)

The main texture of the filling comes from the tofu and vermicelli. Alternatively, you can skip the vermicelli and double the amount of tofu. It will produce a great filling as well.

I used dried shiitake mushrooms to add a rich taste and wood ear mushrooms to add a crunchy texture. Both ingredients are very common in northern Chinese cuisine. If you cannot find those ingredients, I’ve included notes in the recipe so you can replace them with more common ingredients.

Alternatively, you can use spring roll wrappers to make the filling into egg rolls. They’re so much easier to wrap and faster to prepare. I’ve tried using the same filling for egg rolls and they worked out great. You can refer to this post to see how to wrap and cook egg rolls.

Vegan Chinese Tofu Dumplings

The best way to store dumplings is to freeze them right after wrapping. You don’t need to thaw them before cooking and they will turn out just as great.

On the other hand, if you’ve cooked all the dumplings, you can store them in the fridge for 2 to 3 days or freeze them for up to a month. I always prefer to reheat them in the air-fryer to avoid using oil and still get crispy results. You can reheat them in a lightly greased pan on the stovetop as well.

I included a couple dumpling dipping sauce recipes in this post. Personally, the first recipe is my favorite and that’s how I make all my dumpling sauces. But feel free to explore other options. I also highly recommend adding a few drops of homemade chili oil to your sauce if you like to spice things up.

Homemade Vegetable Potstickers Or Dumplings (vegan Recipe)

This recipe requires quite a lot of chopping. I prefer to chop the ingredients using a knife so I have total control over the texture. Alternatively, you can use a food processor to chop the veggies quickly.

If you give this recipe a try, let us know! Leave a comment, rate it (once you’ve tried it), and take a picture and tag it @ on Instagram! I’d love to see what you come up with.

The dumpling filling has a well-balanced texture with veggies, tofu, and rice vermicelli. It’s seasoned with plenty of aromatics, soy sauce, and just a dash of curry powder to enhance its richness.

Vegetable Dumplings (vegan Gyoza / Potstickers)

Serving: 1 dumpling , Calories: 44 kcal , Carbohydrates: 6.8 g , Protein: 1.4 g , Fat: 1.4 g , Saturated Fat: 0.2 g , Sodium: 82 mg , Potassium: 30 mg , Fiber: 0.5 g , Sugar: 0.6 g , Calcium: 10 mg , Iron: 0.4 mg

Did You Make This Recipe? Don’t forget the last step! Leave a comment below, and tag me @ and # on Instagram!

Hi I'm Maggie Zhu! Welcome to my site about modern Chinese cooking - including street food, family recipes, and restaurant dishes. I take a less labor-intensive approach while maintaining the taste and look of the dish. I am originally from Beijing, and now cook from my New York kitchen.Chinese new year is almost here and in my family we have the tradition of eating vegan dumplings when the clock strikes 12 on new years day. My mom is known for her special homemade vegan dumplings. It’s filled with lots of veggies, and she follows the idea of a 5 element diet so the filling is colorful and flavorful. People simply couldn’t get enough of them and often request her for the recipe and now I’m sharing it with you!

Vegetable And Tofu Stuffed Dumplings

A delicious vegetarian or vegan dumpling is hard to find, not a lot of people make them and even less of them make it well. Most are filled with lots of processed elements such as tofu or dried radish, which doesn’t have much texture nor flavor. My mom’s been making her version of vegan dumplings ever since I can remember, since this is a family tradition. I must have watched her made these over a hundred times but this is actually the first time that I’ve ever made it from head to toe on my own. (Probably because she always think that I’m not fast enough) There are millions of dishes out there but I think this dumpling is the only one that really brings me home every time I taste it.

Mom loves bragging about this recipe too, saying that there’s no others like this one dumpling and she’s right! A good vegan dumpling should be balanced, she said, it has to include all 5 elements. The “Five Elements” are metal(金, jin1), wood(木, mu4), water(水, shui3), fire(火, huo3) and earth(土, tu3). Chinese people use this Five Elements theory for a lot of things, from interaction between internal organs, politics, Chinese medicine and even Chinese cooking and food. Five elements also represent our five main organs, which are lung (metal), liver (wood), kidney (water), heart (fire) and spleen (earth). This five elements also represent by five different colors, white (metal), green (wood), black/blue (water), red (fire) and yellow (earth). You can read more about the five element theory of Chinese cooking in this article from the Spruce if you’re interested.

The ingredients in this recipe is based on the color of the 5 elements: cabbage is white, spinach is green, shiitake mushroom is black, carrot is red and tofu skin is yellow. This recipe is also Buddhist vegan friendly so there’s no garlic or onions, ginger being the main seasoning for the filling. My mom usually adds an extra ingredient not listed in my recipe- black wood ear, I’ve omitted it since it’s not easy to find around here but feel free to add it if it’s available to you. It adds a very special texture to the dumpling.

Vegan Dumplings (vegan Gyoza / Potstickers)

After all these dumpling posts, I’ve gotten pretty good at making my homemade dumpling wrappers. I have to say that I definitely prefer this much more than the frozen ones from the Asian store plus I don’t need to drive to the store just so I can get those wrappers. I’ve been trying hard to make everything from scratch since I’m curious about how things were made back in the days and there are ingredients that’s harder to find like the tofu skin. I made mine from scratch, then fry it until golden in a pan to release even more flavor and create a firmer texture before adding them to my dumpling fillings. If you don’t want to make yours the best option is to use dry tofu or crumble up some extra firm tofu and fry