I have to be honest. I love dumplings. All sorts. Big, small, boiled, fried, steamed, Korean, Chinese, Japanese. You name it!
I finally found the one type of dumpling I have always wanted to try out. Mandu 만두. I am thankful to have an Asian supermarket (Longdan) to introduce these. (Sorry if these are sold elsewhere, but I have never seen these around before!).
As you can see, they are very big compared to the Chinese and Japanese dumplings. Chinese ones are meatier and and can be big or small (depends on where you go). Japanese ones tend to be small (their gyozas). For some reason, the first ones I found are vegetarian. Didn't like these very much because they had this doughy, uncooked type stuff in it that made it taste weird. These cost under £3.
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| Vegetarian Mandu |
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| Back of the package |
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| Mandu |
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| Uh, mandu again from the side |
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| Close up ^^ |
And the second lot I found are vegetarian but it's beef flavoured. I think they use protein to substitute the beef. Pretty cool! As it does taste a little meaty and better than the vegetarian ones! These cost under £4.
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| Vegetarian dumpling (mandu) - beef flavour |
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| They're still frozen here :P |
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| Now they're cooked! |
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| Another close up!! |
However both smell very strongly of chives! So watch out for chive breath!
Nevertheless, mandu is a popular Korean dumpling. And I think I will try them with some Korean ramyun (noodles / ramen) next time! ^_^
