Serve with Chili Soy Dipping Sauce

Spicy Ginger Chicken Potstickers are incredibly easy to assemble, steam and pan sear. Make these at home and you will pass on buying frozen ones. You don’t even have to tell your favorite take out restaurant you are making them either. 😎

Learn How to Fold Dumplings

Potsticker – It’s All in the Translation

Those of us who enjoy dim sum are very familiar with several types on the menus of our local Chinese restaurants. Some of which you may see are Har Gow, Pork and Chive Dumplings, Shu Mai and even Potstickers to name a few.

Beyond knowing what we like to eat, the knowledge of dim sum origins, especially the origin of the names, is lost over time. Finding the roots of where the English translations originated from Chinese Jiǎozi (饺子) to Dumplings in English or Guōtiē (锅贴) to Potsticker has proven to be an education in Chinese emigration to the first Chinese women to write Cookbooks and even a Chinese Cooking Show.

Coining the Term Potsticker

Buwei Yang Chao was born in Nanjing, China about 200 miles from Shanghai. As an adult she attended University in Japan where she studied Western Culture Medicine. Ultimately becoming one of the first women to bring western medicine to China.

In 1922, her husband, linguist Yuen Ren Chao, was hired by Harvard University to teach Chinese. Making their new home in Massachusetts, Buwei Yang Chao spoke little to no English and began cooking at home. Over he years her friends encouraged her to write a cookbook.

During WWII, with the aid of her husband and daughter, they translated recipes from Chinese to English leading to her How to Cook and Eat in Chinese cookbook.

As they translated Chinese words and cooking techniques to English, they looked for words to describe the processes and food. As a result, they are credited with popularizing the words Potsticker and Stir Fry to describe preparations.

The term Stir Fry replaced the Mandarin word, ch’ao. A word describing the technique of cutting vegetables and meat into small pieces and tossing over heat.

Potsticker comes from the translational Guōtiē, meaning Wok Stick or Pan Stick. The couple turned the traditional translation of Guōtiē into the term Potsticker as the term we know today.

She went on to write a second book, Autobiography of a Chinese Woman. A telling of her life leading up to moving to the United States.

Peking Ravioli

With the popularity of Julia Child’s cooking show in the 1960s, WGBH Public Television began looking for additional instructional cooking show ideas. They teamed up with Joyce Chen, cookbook author and Chinese restaurant owner in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Her television show, Joyce Chen Cooks. The television show ran for 26 episodes between 1966- 1967. She coined the term, “Peking Ravioli” for “Chinese Ravioli” on the show.

Joyce Chen Cooks – Peking Ravioli Episode

Joyce Chen’s cooking show demonstrated classic Chinese cooking techniques in an American style kitchen with insightful tips to cook at home. Watch the episode Joyce Chen Cooks – Peking Ravioli episode from the GBH Archives to get some of her tips on cooking the dumplings.

Going from Dumpling to Potsticker?

During the Song Dynasty an imperial chef was boiling Jiǎozi, or dumplings, and forget about them. Boiling the wok dry, he would return to see the dumplings had stuck to the bottom of the wok. Creating Guōtiē, ot having enough time to prepare a second batch, he carefully pried them from the wok and served them as pan fried dumplings. The Imperial court became enamored by the new take on a Jiǎozi creating a new cooking technique to make Guōtiē. In Mandarin Chinese, Guo means Wok and Tie means stick.

Dumplings to Celebrate Chinese New Year

Dumplings are a traditional menu item for celebrating Chinese New Year. The belief is that eating dumplings will result in wealth in the upcoming year. This belief comes from dumplings looking like Chinese silver ingots. Over 1800 years ago, dumplings began to be formed in the shape of these ingots, oval shaped and curled up at the ends creating the classic fold of the dumpling.

Looks like a plate of Spicy Ginger Chicken Potstickers are in order!

Enjoy!