手羽餃子 - Chicken wing gyoza

This is one of my most favourite dinner, the taste is guarantee great, even better than the ordinal Gyoza, just takes much care and time.

It looks like just a fried chicken wing, but the inside the bag of skin is full of Gyoza meat filled.

Just dip in the same Gyoza sauce and bite on. Can't forget the taste, can't give up making it even it takes so much effort & time. (It took me 2 hours...)

Ingredients:

about 12 chicken wings (we use only the wing tip part)

a) 200 g minced pork or chicken
a) 1/2 Tbsp ginger minced
a) 1.5 garlic cloves minced (I love a lot of garlic in but this is totally how much you can take)
a) 4 cm leak white part minced
a) 1/2 Tbsp soy sauce
a) 1/2 Tbsp sake
a) 1 tsp sesame oil
a)  salt & black pepper

toothpicks - as many as the chicken wings, plus few for spare

Serving sauce
Soy sauce & sushi-zu (1 : 1)
few drops of chilli oil (La-yu)

Method:

1. Mix all ingredients with a) above, leave it a side.

2. Prepare chicken wings. Firstly clean all wings under running water, take off any visible feather or the root remained.

3. Cut out the wings in to 2 parts. We need only the wing tip and the next section, not the meatiest near the body section (I usually use the remained sections for Karaage). Open the joint between the thickest part and the next one, hold the thicker side by your left hand, slide the knife along with the holding thick part - so keep the most of skin on the other side. If you slide the knife straight down along with the thick part, that should hit the joint cartridge and should be easy to cut into two pieces.

4. Take off bones from the next section. Basically the part becomes a bag for the minced meat. Using a sharp knife, slides down the skin and meat about 1cm from the cut off joint, so the junction of 2 thin bones appear. On the junction at just between those 2 bones, slice down the knife and cut off the junction connecting those 2 bones, so those 2 thin bones become disconnected each other and free to move independently. Push down the meat around the top further, trim a bit using knife if you need.

5. Now stand the section - the cut off joint up. There are 2 bones, a thin bone and an even thinner bone there. Pull and open those bones apart from each other, to about 180 degree, with sliding down the meat around the thinner bone. This shouldn't be too hard. Now twist and screw the thinner bone for 360 degree, then the bone will be totally free to take off.

6. Now thicker bone. The skin is connected to the bone at only one side like a line. All other part are with meat just hanging around that. So using the sharp knife, take off the skin connection along the bone until half of the bone length. Now hold the wing tip by your left hand, hold the bone on your right hand, then snap  the joint to front, back , up and down, then twist the bone for 180 degree - now the bone is totally free from joint and easy to pull off.

* If you think the steps until here are too hard, just make them Karaage, because the most painful part is after this. 

7. Prepare toothpicks and a small spoon handy. Each chicken wing now has a cavity to fill with the minced meat mixture. But those still have chicken meat until near the end of the skin bags. Using the small spoon, push off the meat around the entrance of the skin bag and make clear of meat for enough space to close them later. Then using the same small spoon, push enough meat mixture into the cavity - fill as much as you can but think you have to close at the end; the skin is flexible and not easy to break or explode during cooking.

8. Just like sawing the clothes, saw together the mouth of each bag by the toothpick, about 3 stitches, so the open part of bag is closed and the contents cannot come out. Be really careful for not stubbing your fingers.

9. Now easy part. On a frying pan, put about 1 tbsp vegetable oil. If you are using Teflon frying pan, you don't need any oil. Turn on the heat to medium high, place all wings - thicker skin side down. Fry them until the down side gets brown, and then turn them over.

10. Once the other side also get brown, pour about 1/2 cup water in the pan then cap it, turn down the heat to medium and keep cooking for about 10 min. 

11. Take off the cap and continue cooking until the water is mostly evaporated. Keep in mind the water will get reduce, but oil will come out from wings, so drain the oil out if you don't like them. 

12. Serve them with steamed rice. Take off the toothpicks before you dig in!