Gyoza is a Japanese style of dumpling and one of the most popular Japanesesoul food. The word ‘Gyoza’ was derived from thereading of ‘饺子’ in the Shandong Chinese dialect.

As you know, dumpling is a food that consists of ground meat and/or sea food and/or chopped vegetable and dough skin. They are eaten throughout Asia and Eastern Europe.

Dumplings can be divided into some types depending on the way of cooking, boiled and steamed, pan fried.

Boiled dumplings

• Boiled dumpling: Boiling is the most common recipe of dumpling in the northern part of China. Chinese people eat boiled dumplings during the Chinese New Year.

• Steamed dumpling: In Canton, southern area of China, steamed dumplings are very popular. They enjoy steamed dumplings with tea service. Steamed dumplings are often called ‘dim sum’ in English.

• Pan-fried dumpling: Pan fried dumplings are the most popular dumplings in Japan.
  

  Steamed dumplings

  Gyoza generally means pan-fried dumpling in Japan. Pan-fried dumpling are called ‘鍋貼, guotie’ in Chinese and ‘pot sticker’ in English.

Japanese Style Gyoza

After World War 2, Gyoza was brought to Japan from China by repatriates, whereafter it developed an original style that satisfies Japanese tastes.

Japanese-style Gyoza

Now, Gyoza has become one of the most popular Japanese soul food.

Boiled and steamed dumplings are popular in China. However, Japanese people prefer pan-fried dumplings. A clear differences of Japanese-style Gyoza from Chinese-style dumplings are the rich garlic flavor. And Japanese-style Gyoza is wrapped with much thinner skin than Chinese one. By pan-frying thin, we can enjoy crispy texture.

Dough skin of Gyoza

The general ingredients of Gyoza are minced pork, cabbage, Chinese chive, sesame oil and/or garlic and thinly rolled dough skins.

Gyoza can be found in Ramen restaurants and Chinese restaurants and supermarkets all over Japan.