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I know it's traditional to make gyoza filling with raw vegetables, but is it also made with raw meat, or should it be cooked first? With other types of dumplings I usually cook the meat before adding it to the dough. This time I'm not sure.. will there be any risk of salmonella or other bacterias if I make the filling with raw meat?

Edit: Just for reference, I'm planning on using chicken instead of pork.

mdegges
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  • I did this with raw meat last night and cooked the gyoza as if they were potstickers, anecdotal but relevant. Also let me refer you to www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig74CY-A1aM which is the Good Eats episode in which Alton Brown advocates using raw pork in potstickers. – Kaya May 14 '13 at 05:52

1 Answers1

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Of course you can make gyoza with raw meat—that would be the traditional method. You can find countless recipes, including raw meat ones, simply by googling "gyoza recipe".

While perhaps less common, you can also google "chicken gyoza recipe" to find many options using chicken such as this one, although there are some false hits mixed in that are not chicken based.

Gyoza (which are the Japanese version of pot stickers) are normally not much larger than bite sized. This small size will help ensure that they are cooked through during the hybrid frying/steaming method that gives them their crispy bottoms, which is normally similar to:

  1. Fry the dumplings, flat side down, until the bottoms begin to be brown.
  2. Add water to the pan, and cover, creating a makeshift steaming environment to cook the dumpling through.
  3. Allow the water to evaporate and the bottoms to re-crisp.

While it is is fairly difficult to take the internal temperature of a single dumpling (you probably can if you have a very high quality instant-read thermometer with a short probe distance, like a Thermapen), you can still judge their doneness indirectly by squeezing. They will be quite firm.

The small size (even very big Chinese style pot stickers tend not to be more than an inch/couple cm wide, although they may be longer) helps make sure they can cook through very quickly; steaming is also a very effective method at transferring heat into the target food.

So yes, making gyoza with raw meat, done with some care, is safe.

SAJ14SAJ
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  • Thanks for your detailed response. This will be my first time making gyoza. I made Mediterranean soup the other night, and the recipe said to cook the chicken before throwing it into the rest of soup- it mentioned something about salmonella. I just assumed that adding raw meat into anything (dumplings, soups, etc) was a no-no. – mdegges May 14 '13 at 19:38