Add These Dumplings to Your Stew for a Complete Meal (2024)

FAQs

What can you add to stew to bulk it up? ›

Spices: (Optional)

Use regular or hot paprika if you want a little warmth and Smoked Paprika if you're after more of a barbeque style smoky flavour. Chilli and paprika work well with tomato based dishes where as herbs work best with gravy based stews.

The dumplings are just three ingredients and are simply added into the bowl of the slow cooker, atop the casserole, during the last hour of cooking.

"Soups and stews really need to simmer for long periods to allow the ingredients to meld together. Taking that a step further, most soups and stews are better if you prepare them the day before serving. Allowing them to cool and then reheating them really helps bring out the flavors and textures."

Coating the meat in flour and searing adds incredible color and flavor to the beef, which is then infused throughout the stew. It also creates browned bits on the bottom of the pan, and when we deglaze those with red wine, it takes the flavor to new heights.

How do you deepen beef stew flavor? Brown your meat, use red wine, and add tomato paste, Worcestershire sauce, or mushroom powder for a richer flavor. Instead of wine, you can use beer, like we do in this Guinness Beef Stew.

What counts as one serve? Our tasters found out you can fill up on dumplings fairly quickly. Make a meal of your dumplings, and make them go further, by serving them with a plate of fresh, steamed greens. We recommend 120g, or about six dumplings, as a good serving size.

Five of these large dumplings are enough to fill me up as a complete meal with protein, vegetable, and carbohydrate. A few extra tips on the recipe: When making the dough, it's important to use hot water because it helps dissolve the flour's starch molecules to absorb more water so the dough is firmer and less sticky.

What pairs well with dumplings? ›

The best side dishes to serve with Asian dumplings (East Asia) are ramen, tomato and egg stir fry, fried greens, chilli miso steamed aubergine, pork belly fried rice, cucumber salad (Oi Muchim), tahini miso noodles, and claypot tofu.

Dumplings are most commonly formed from flour or meal bound with egg and then simmered in water or gravy stock until they take on a light cakey texture. Many recipes call for herbs, onions, grated cheese, or chopped meat to be rolled into the dough before cooking.

A soup dumpling is made from three main parts: a supple, delicately thin dumpling skin; rich, juicy meat; and a seasoned broth. At room temperature, the broth has a gelatin texture, but when it's steamed, the dumpling becomes a little packet of hot soup and meat.

Chinese cabbage, Chinese chive, fennel leaves, courgette, carrot, daikon, stem lettuce, aubergine, tomato, cucumber, celery, spinach, coriander, bamboo shoot…… The list goes on. For vegetarian versions of dumpling fillings, egg and tofu are popular sources of protein.

As long as they're not pre-deep fried and contain whole, healthy ingredients they are an okay option, according to Austin. Aside from meat quality and how the dumplings have been cooked, the vegetable content (or lack thereof) is also crucial in knowing whether dumplings are a healthy food option.