A northerner's boiled dumplings
Northern-style shui jiao are unfussy and unphotogenic. There’s really no point to pinching pretty pleats and seashell folds and braided edges when the dumplings are going to be cooked like that, all detail erased in the turbulence of boiling water.
The ideal boiled dumpling has a thin skin that’s both delicate and resisting, tense with a slight chew, slippery and slurpable, like a perfectly cooked noodle. A tug of dough upon first bite, a release of steam and aroma. You eat one dumpling after the other until you’re full and flushed in the face, and then more plates arrive, and you decide you can eat more.
I appreciate the perfection of steamed dumplings like har gow and the pan-fried indulgence of guo tie, but none of them can be scarfed down the same way as a plate of shui jiao. It’s like eating a bowl of noodles, you can’t be too precious about it.
