Since my wife and I work until late, we often eat gyoza (餃子) as a simple dinner. Then, we were talking about how amazingly developed frozen gyoza did compared to the ones before. So, today I’m going to talk about frozen gyoza in Japan. Let’s get started.
The History
Gyoza is a dumpling in Japanese. Without saying that, originally gyoza came from China, which is called as jiaozi (饺子) in Chinese. According to Wikipedia, it says jiaozi originated in around 6th century B.C. in the Shandong Province in China. The gyoza wrapper is made from flour. The fillings are mixed minced meat, shrimps, vegetables, and so on. There are various cooking methods. You can steam, grill, fry, and boil.
In Japan, it was the first eaten by Mitsukuni Tokugawa in the 18th century. He is well known as a hero of Mitokomon which is depicted in a TV drama series among many ages. At that time, it is said that gyoza was brought by the Chinese, and he ate it. Wow, it has more than 300 years of history! After World War Ⅱ, it has become popular since many soldiers who found gyoza were tasty in China went back to Japan.
What’s The Difference?
What is the difference between gyoza and jiaozi? For Chinese people, jiaozi is one of their staple foods, so usually they don’t eat it with rice. Speaking of jiaozi, it’s common to eat by boiling, not by pan-frying. The wrapper is thicker than the Japanese one, but it tastes very good in its own way. On the flip side, when it comes to gyoza, for most people in Japan, the grilled one pops into their minds. We eat them with rice, and restaurants serve as a combo meal for ramen with gyoza. It goes well with beer. When you order okonomiyaki at restaurants in Japan, it comes with rice, when you order oden, it comes with rice, when you order noodles, it comes with rice, and so on. Restaurants have a combo menu with rice to your fill up. Sorry for going off on a tangent. When you put gyoza on the plate, Japanese people face up on the part of the backside which has a grilled surface. On the other hand, Chinese people face up on the part that has the knot. That’s the difference. What makes gyoza wonderful? It is important for Japanese people that the wrapper is chewy but outside is crispy and that the filling has a juicy flavor.
Japan Is A Gyoza Power
Many localities are boosting their specialties, and Tochigi, Shizuoka, and Saitama are known as the best gyoza towns all over Japan. They compete with each other on how their gyoza arespecial with the sizes, textures, and tastes. Not only in these prefectures, but you can eat various types of gyoza all over Japan. Japanese-Chinese restaurants definitely offer gyoza, so you can eat it everywhere.
How To Cook
As it is time-consuming to cook from scratch, you might want to go to grocery stores to find pre-prepared foods. You can save time because it’s pre-prepared food. All you have to do is to put the oil in the pan and fry it. After a few minutes, you put a fifth cup of water in the pan and close the lid to steam it until all of the water is gone. Just eyeball it. It is going to be 20-30 minutes in total. It’s simple, right? You shouldn’t open the lid during steaming. It is the sign to open the lid when you hear dry sounds in the pan. You can dip them in a sauce is made from soy sauce, vinegar, and chili oil. Or mustard. My recommendation is gochujang, which is a Korean black bean paste. It’s good for changing your taste. Hmm, thinking about it is making my mouth water.
Frozen Gyoza
In this day and age, there are a variety of frozen foods at grocery stores in Japan. Looking back twenty years ago, it wasn’t as good as the frozen technology today. Frozen food used to be a substitute for the time when you didn’t have enough time to cook and it didn’t taste as good as pre-prepared ones. Now, frozen gyoza might broaden your horizons. You don’t need any oil and water. All you have to do is to take them out of your fridge and put them on the pan. Plus, you can make a wing shaped crispy layer that makes gyoza special that you can’t cook at home. It looks like it was made by a chef. Gyoza is really popular for Japanese people but the cooking is not easy. How much time to grill, the timing of putting water, and how much time to steam, everything is important. So you might know that you can cook it easily on the surface, but actually this dish is really deep and profound. Companies are bending over backwards to be convenient for our life. Now that they launched the frozen gyoza that no one fails to cook without any oil and water. I have to take my hat off to their continuous efforts, otherwise you don’t make the crispy wings of gyoza without any failures. I’m really excited about what the next frozen gyoza holds for us.
How was it ? Gyoza originally came from China and was developed in Japan. It’s really fun to go out to a restaurant but you might want to cook gyoza at home. Thanks for taking your time to read my article to the end. I hope you’ll see your special gyoza one day. Why don’t you go to buy it tonight? See you in my next article soon!
I worked at a trading company for many years. I live in Tokyo with my wife. Love skiing, traveling, IPAs, wine , X-treme sports, fashion, and learning English and Chinese.
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