Shrimp or Prawn Dumplings - Easy Restaurant Dupe

Recipe: Shrimp or Prawn Dumpling Recipe »

These homemade prawn dumplings in chilli oil are juicy, flavour packed and surprisingly easy to make! Easy to make with simple ingredients, they are perfect as an appetiser or snack - and you can even freeze some for later too (if they're not all gobbled up!).

About This Shrimp or Prawn Dumplings

These shrimp or prawn dumplings in chilli oil are one of the tastiest appetisers at Chinese restaurants but did you know that they're super easy to make at home? Out of all of the dumplings, they're actually the easiest dumpling to make and the quickest to cook. They're also made with regular ingredients that you won't have to search high and low for. I'll show you how to make these restaurant quality dumplings.

This recipe is based on my mother's dumpling recipe and uses her tips in them to turn out perfect dumplings every single time.

Why You'll love these Prawn Dumplings:

At a Chinese restaurant you'll pay around $18 for 7 or so of these dumplings. You can make 20 of these for the same price (did I calculate this? Yes haha!)

These dumplings are super tasty and high in protein with lots of prawns in them. There's no filler as you know what is in them.

These dumplings only take around 2 minutes to cook and don't require a steamer. Just boiling these will do!

The dumplings will tell you when they're ready - they'll just float to the top when they're cooked through.

These shrimp dumplings can be made and then frozen (uncooked) so that you will always have dumplings ready to eat!

Video How To Make Shrimp or Prawn Dumplings

Video: How to Make Shrimp Dumplings

Ingredients For Shrimp or Prawn Dumplings

Prawns - We need raw, peeled prawns for this. Frozen peeled and deveined prawns are perfect for these dumplings and are what I most often use (I hate peeling prawns!).

Spring onion or chives - The long green spring onions or shallots. You can also use garlic chives.

Garlic cloves - Fresh garlic is best for this.

Ginger - Grate fresh ginger root or you can also use minced ginger from the jar. I have used both depending on what I have at the time and they both work well.

Cornflour/fine cornstarch - This is my mother's trick. It is used as a thickener and binder and helps the filling stick together and inside the wrapper.

Salt - Fine salt

Pepper - A lot of Chinese recipes use white pepper. In fact growing up we never had black pepper, only white pepper!

MSG - MSG is a flavour enhancer and is made by fermenting starches, sugar beets or sugarcane. Despite the bad press (that actually started as a hoax letter in the 1960s) it isn't a dangerous product and it is naturally present in a lot of umami rich foods. But if you don't want to use it, don't :) But if you're on a low sodium diet, MSG has only 12% sodium while salt has 40%.

Egg white - Like the cornflour, this is used as a binder and to make the filling more tender. Trust me, when you try these you'll see what I mean!

Wonton wrappers - I like using the yellow wonton wrappers for shrimp dumplings but use the white if you prefer those. The white ones are a bit thicker than the yellow ones and you tend to get more yellow wrappers per packet than the white. But it's all personal preference!

Tips For Making Shrimp or Prawn Dumplings

1 - Chop the prawns well. If you have large pieces of prawn it is trickier to fill the dumplings.

2 - Mix the filling well to distribute all of the seasonings.

3 - My mother never used a pastry brush and would use her finger to wet the sides of the wonton wrappers. I find that it creates a bit of buildup on the fingers but nothing that washing your hands every now and then won't fix!

4 - Make sure to seal the dumplings well. I usually seal them up and then double check the seals just before boiling them.

5 - I like serving these as is with chilli oil and spring onion but you can also serve these with a noodle soup. You can also deep fry these shrimp dumplings too!

Other prawn dumplings to try next are: my mother's wontons (legendary in our extended family and among friends), my mother's siu mai or this easy hack for chee cheong fan rolls.

Shrimp or Prawn Dumpling Recipe

An Original Recipe by Lorraine Elliott

Recipe Overview

Preparation time: 20 minutes

Cooking time: 5 minutes

Serves: 2-4 people as an appetiser (makes 20 dumplings)

Ingredients Needed

For Dumplings

• 300g/10.6oz prawns, raw, peeled and deveined
• 4 tablespoons/20g/1.4oz finely chopped spring onion or chives
• 1.5 teaspoons cornflour/fine cornstarch
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 white pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon MSG
• 1 egg white (30g/1oz)
• 3-4 garlic cloves, crushed
• 30g/1oz grated ginger
• 20 egg wonton wrappers

To Serve

• Chilli crisp oil (recipe here)
• 1 tablespoon coriander
• 1 tablespoon spring onions
• 1 teaspoon sesame seeds

Step-By-Step Instructions

Step 1 FILLING - Pat prawns dry with paper towels and chop until you get a fine mixture with no large pieces. Place in a large bowl and add the green onions, cornflour, salt, pepper and MSG. Then add in the egg white, garlic and ginger and mix together well with chopsticks or a spoon.

Step 2 SHAPE - Have a large tray ready for the dumplings. Wet the edges of a wonton wrapper and brush with water. Add a teaspoon of prawn filling and press together the sides to form a triangle making sure that the edges are sealed well. Repeat with the remaining wrappers and filling.

Step 3 COOK - Place a large pot of water onto boil and just check the seals of the dumplings before adding them to the water in lots of 5 or 6. Simmer for 2-3 minutes - when the dumplings float to the top they are ready. Remove with a slotted spoon and place on a serving platter.

Step 4 SERVE - Drizzle chilli oil on top and scatter coriander leaves, green onions and sesame seeds and serve.

Personal Note

I was talking to Mr NQN and Sophia at dinner one night and we were chatting about set menus. We were at a friend's restaurant and she asked us for feedback so we gave her some on the food as well as tips for the restaurant in general. One thing that Sophia said was that they could do with a set menu. When she goes out with other friends, if there is a set menu they'll order from it because it saves a lot of hassle and some people don't like looking at menus. Mr NQN piped up that he hates looking at them as he gets anxiety from too many choices and he doesn't want to choose the wrong thing.

I knew that he hated looking at them but that's why he has me. I LOVE looking at menus. When I was a kid whenever we'd get a takeaway menu in our letterbox I'd take it and scour the menu to see what was on offer. I had a big pile of takeaway menus by the bed that made for great bedside reading. I was obviously a food obsessed weirdo since childhood. And even today I love reading a menu and will always research what to order before going to a restaurant. It does throw me though if the menu online has changed and I have my heart set on something!

So tell me Dear Reader, do you prefer set menus or do you order a la carte? And how do you feel about reading menus?