How do "add a bowl of water and let it come back to boil" recipes work?

October 26, 2021 3:06 PM

Every once in a while I see dumpling recipes with Chinese-style cooking directions, where instead of timing by minutes you add cold water to the cooking water N times and wait for it to come back to the boil each time. So ok, noob question: the size of the cooking pot and water bowl would make a big difference, right? What are the right sizes?

Before, I've seen it in family recipes where "bowl" could have meant "that one specific little bowl that Grandma kept by the stove in Hong Kong" or something. But now I'm looking at it on a bag of frozen potstickers from a factory in Boston. So now I'm curious — is there some kind of understood standard size?

posted by nebulawindphone to Food & Drink (11 answers total)

Going solely by the frozen dumplings I generally eat (Pelmeni), it's not a function of time it's a function of temperature, so the size of the container is irrelevant (within reason; a swimming pool would take days to heat up obvs).

...that is to say, once the water (of whatever volume) is boiling, then the dumplings are done, because they have reached the correct temperature (more accurately, once the water is boiling, the pelmeni which float are done, the ones which do not float yet are not yet done).
posted by aramaic at 3:10 PM on October 26, 2021 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Ah, sorry, important detail: these frozen dumplings are frozen with the pork filling still raw, so "they're done when they float" doesn't work.

(I always just wing it and err on the side of too long and they're fine. But I'm curious what the "correct" way of following the directions is.)
posted by nebulawindphone at 3:18 PM on October 26, 2021

Best answer: I’m a recent convert to this method. Generally you’re just trying to take it off the boil repeatedly & want to add enough water to do that. It’s somewhat flexible (within bounds) in that the more you bring the temp down by adding slightly more water, the less cooking happens until the temp comes back up again.

The Xi’an Famous Foods cookbook instructions for frozen dumplings specify half a cup of water added at a time, repeated three times, but only mention a “large” pot of cooking water. When I do it I add closer to a cup each time. I think this is one of those techniques where you just develop your own protocol with your own one specific bowl and get comfortable with it over time. If you have an instant read thermometer you can pull out a dumpling and check the first few times to monitor progress/feel confident they are cooked.
posted by yarrow at 4:16 PM on October 26, 2021 [3 favorites]

The volume of water in the pot and in the bowl will make a difference. These days an easier and surer solution is to boil the dumplings until they float, then grab a representative dumpling from the pot with tongs or a slotted spoon and quickly insert an instant read thermometer into the middle. Once they're at least 165°F, you're safe from whatever bacterial contamination occurred in their manufacture, but the wrappers taste better if you cook until they're at least 180°F, so the starch gets fully cooked.
posted by metonym at 4:16 PM on October 26, 2021 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Yeah, I get it. But I really am curious about this specific cooking technique and how people use it, and not just like "What are all the ways I might test if food is done?"
posted by nebulawindphone at 4:27 PM on October 26, 2021 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I always assume the "bowl" measure in Chinese cooking is a rice bowl. It's not as exact of a measurement as an 8 oz cup, but it's much more specific than an American soup bowl. Etsy has a boatload, they're usually 4-5" in diameter.

Note that "Chinese rice bowls" sold by American manufacturers are often bigger.
posted by A Blue Moon at 7:13 PM on October 26, 2021 [1 favorite]

It's because of lack of temperature control and not wanting a roiling boil which will tear the dumpling apart as they get tossed around. You just want to keep it right around the just barely gentle boil area but you can't do that over a fire or you have to meticulously adjust the temperature on the stove to just keep it at that right place where it's boiling, but not hard turbulent boiling.

My frozen potstickers go like this: little bit of oil in the pot, arrange potsticers, like 1/4 cup water, bring to boil and turn down to a bit of a simmer, put lid on pot, wait, as the water gets low the lid will rattle and then the water is gone and things are cooked and the oil is still there so in like a minute you have a nice crisp bottom.

If you can control your heat enough to get it right up to right around the boil and no further or no less.... you can actually nail down a time and not have to worry about them being torn apart in a heavy bubbling boil. That's the worst, dumplings can be fragile.
posted by zengargoyle at 8:09 PM on October 26, 2021 [1 favorite]

I follow a Korean cooking Youtube channel called one meal a day (which I actually found due to an Ask MetaFilter question!) and I have not seen them cook dumplings this way, but I have seen them use it for a couple noodle recipes, like this one and this one, so you can watch the technique in action!

The subtitles in English say "half a cup" of water, and in practice it looks like a good-sized glug out of a mug, haha. It looks like the visual cue is letting it boil pretty hard, then pouring and making sure the bubbles die down quite a lot? That is not particularly descriptive, and it does seem pretty much like it's a figure-out-your-own-best-protocol thing like yarrow suggested.
posted by sigmagalator at 9:52 PM on October 26, 2021

Half an Ikea bowl which is roughly one Chinese rice bowl.
Because that is the way somebody in Beijing told me to do it with the freezer dumplings.
Single boil does not cook the filling completely, adding cold water probably keeps the skin from braking. Somebody also told me something about temperature schok but I cannot remember it now
posted by thegirlwiththehat at 12:05 AM on October 27, 2021

Best answer: I'm pretty sure the point is not precision doneness, but rather keeping them cooking "long enough" without them getting damaged by the boiling water. Not all stove types are easy to turn down to low (very few, really, in the days of solid fuel - cooking with a wood stove is a trip and a half, if you've never done it) so adding cold water is a much more reliable/faster way to make the water stop boiling. It also requires way less attention. Dumplings are not easy to ruin with a little overcooking.
posted by Lady Li at 12:06 AM on October 27, 2021 [3 favorites]

Best answer: I also suspect there is an auto compensation factor - if you add too much cold water, it'll cool the dumplings more and slow their cooking, but then it will also have more time in the warm water as it comes back to the boil.
posted by Lady Li at 12:08 AM on October 27, 2021