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I made dumplings from white flour and Atora vegetable suet. The suet is in hard pellets so I'm not worried about having overworked the mixture. I made them at the same time as the stew to save on wash-up. Then I stored them in the fridge for 4 hours before putting them in the pot for 20ish minutes. The pot was in the oven at 140C. They quickly puffed up and filled the top layer of the pot. But when cut open they had a different texture inside and (presumably) the taste of raw suet and flour. Is it likely the fridge or sitting time can explain the failure?

Edit: I still have some spares in the fridge and the pellets of suet are still visible in them. So I definitely did not overwork the dough.

Daron
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  • It could simply be that they were too cold when they went in the pot. Perhaps try leaving them out for an hour or two to take the chill off before cooking the next batch? – ElendilTheTall Dec 12 '16 at 11:04

1 Answers1

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It's not putting them in the fridge that is the problem, it is the fact they were cold when you put them in the stew. The effects of this would be:

  • Longer cooking time: the 20 minute time assumes that the dumplings are at room temperature, if they are cold they will take longer to cook as their internal temperature is lower. 20 minutes is a guideline anyway, you should test their doneness after 20 minutes even when starting from room temperature
  • Closer texture: cold dough into hot liquid is going to result in a closer texture because the outside is going to cook long before the inside gets warm enough to expand

The way to fix this is to take the dumplings out of the fridge and let them come up to room temperature before cooking, probably 30 minutes or so should do.

GdD
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