Yeah you heard that weirdness right, vegan dumpling salad. What the heck is it, you ask? To be honest, I don’t know. I’ve never heard of it until recently, never thought about it until I spotted a dumpling recipe on Instagram but instantly I wanted to test it out.

I love dumplings. A lot. But let’s be honest, frozen dumplings leave a lot to be desired. They rarely come out right. They often fall apart and somehow end up both piping hot and frozen at the same time. But I’m not a vegan cook to give up easily, okay maybe I am but after seeing that vegan dumpling salad recipe I really wanted to give it another shot.

And then I forgot about it.

Until this Monday when I was at the grocery store and what did they have? Vegan dumplings!!!! These were filled with black and shitake mushrooms, so yum!

Now I promise you this is one salad recipe that you’ll want to eat! It’s easy to make, requires a little bit of prep work but is so delicious and calorie friendly you’ll wonder why you didn’t have the bright idea to turn vegan dumplings into a salad.

Don’t let the list of ingredients intimidate you, it’s more chopping than anything. So, let’s get to it!

Kitchen Tools:

*Mixing bowl
*Salad bowl
*Salad spinner
*Cutting board
*Ramekins
*Skillet

Ingredients:

For the salad:
*Lettuce
*Tomato
*Cucumber
*Soy sauce
*Lemon juice

For the dipping sauce:
*Scallions
*Pickled ginger
*Garlic
*Sesame seeds
*Soy sauce (regular & dark)
*Hot chili paste
*Agave syrup or brown sugar
*Red chili flakes
*Sesame oil
*Chili oil

Dumplings

Instructions:

*Start with the dipping sauce since it’s the most time-consuming. Chop everything that needs to be chopped and stir it all together into a mixing bowl. Set aside.

*Rinse the vegetables and chop them, placing them into the salad bowl.

*Mix soy sauce and lemon juice together, but set it aside and dress the salad right before serving or else it’ll get too soggy. (Lesson learned the hard way!)

*The best option I’ve found for the vegan dumplings is to use the pan-fry and then steam method. It produces the best, most consistent results. To minimize the oil, I sprayed the skillet and added the dumpling, cooking for 3 to 4 minutes before adding waste free broth, about 1/3 cup and turn heat down to medium. Let steam another 3 to 4 minutes.

*Dress the salad. From here you can toss the salad and dumplings together or serve the dumplings on top of the salad, the choice is yours.

*Drizzle with the dipping sauce or put it in ramekins and use it both ways. I put a little right on top–for photos–and dipped them as I ate them and you know what? They were delicious.

Final verdict: I enjoyed the vegan dumplings more than I thought I would but they were just…meh. I’d love to get fresh dumpling wrappers and make it myself, but now I just have to figure out what to do with the rest of those dang dumplings!

What’s your favorite way to eat dumplings?

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