Around the World in 7 Dumplings- FOODIE

By The Daily Meal | FOODIE 

No matter where you are, nearly every culture has a filled dough delicacyTravel just about anywhere on Earth, and you're likely to encounter a dumpling. For just about as long as humans have been eating, they've been dropping balls of dough into boiling water or stock, and they've been filling them with meat or vegetable mixtures for nearly as long as that.

Over the years, creating a filled dumpling has become an art form. Just take a look at the soup dumpling, a dim sum favorite: a mixture of meat and gelatin-rich broth is chilled until it becomes a solid, then it's wrapped up in thin dough and steamed until the mixture inside melts. When you bite into the dumpling, the rich soup spills out; a great soup dumpling is unlike just about any other bite of food you'll ever have.

See: Amazing Dumplings from Around the World

For much of the world, though, filled dumplings are somewhat more rudimentary, even though they still require a great deal of technique and time to properly prepare. Some, like tortellini or the Russian pelmeni, are twisted into shapes, and all filled dumplings need to be perfectly sealed, lest they break open during the cooking process. The dough needs to be the right thickness and the filling the right consistency, and they need to be boiled until perfectly cooked. Thankfully, cultures have had hundreds of years to perfect the process.

Related: 20 Desserts to Try Around the World

While Asia and Italy might have the best-known - and most varied - selection of indigenous dumplings, nearly everywhere else on Earth has theirs as well. In Norway alone, dumplings have dozens of different names, including potetball, klubb, kløbb, raspeball, komle, kumle, kompe, kumpe, kodla, kudle, klot, kams, ball, baill, komperdøse, kumperdøse, kompadøs, ruter, ruta, raskekako, risk, klotremat, krumme, and kromme!

Some places, like the United States, northern Europe, and South America, don't have their own indigenous filled dumpling (the U.S. has boiled dough - think chicken and dumplings - and in South America fried or baked pockets like empanadas have cornered the market), but just about everywhere else you travel, you're bound to encounter savory little pockets of filled dough, either eaten with soup, in tomato sauce, or drowned in sour cream and butter.


Georgia: Khinkali (Pictured Above)
These twisted knobs of dough are usually filled with spiced meat, greens, and onions. They're usually eaten plain or with a sprinkle of coarse-ground black pepper. Juices collect inside the dumpling as they cook, so the right way to eat them is to hold them by the top, take a bite out of the bottom, slurp up the broth, and then eat the rest.


Italy: Ravioli
We'll start with perhaps the world's most famous filled dumpling: ravioli. According to The Oxford Companion to Food, the earliest references to ravioli appear in the writings of a Venetian merchant named Francesco di Marco dating to the 1300s. The earliest recipes fill dough with blanched green herbs and fresh cheese, and don't vary much from what you'll find in Italian restaurants nowadays. Today, most ravioli are produced in factories and sold frozen, but plenty of Italian artisans and home cooks alike still prepare them in the traditional way.


Poland: Pierogi
This dense Polish dumpling is one of the country's greatest contributions to the culinary landscape. They're also incredibly easy to make: flour and a little mashed potato is mixed with warm water, rolled into a dough, and cut out with the lip of a glass, a mixture of mashed potatoes and fried onions is added, and then they're boiled. They're also traditionally then fried and served alongside more fried onions and sour cream. But really, the filling possibilities are endless.


China: Wonton
Probably just as frequently eaten in the United States as ravioli, wontons have many variations in their native China. They're usually filled with a spiced pork mixture, boiled, and served in broth, but sometimes they're also deep-fried. The variety that's eaten in many Chinese-American restaurants is actually relatively similar to what you'd find in China, albeit with a bit less nuance.


 Japan: Gyoza
The popular Japanese gyoza tend to be longer and narrower than other filled dumplings out there, and properly crimping the edge requires a deft hand. They're usually made with very thin dough; stuffed with a mixture of pork, chive, ginger, and sesame oil; pan-fried and hit with some steam at the end; and dipped into a mixture of vinegar and soy sauce.


Lebanon: Shish Barak
These Lebanese dumplings might look like other cultures', but the similarities stop there. They're usually filled with a flavorful beef and pine nut mixture and simmered in goat milk yogurt seasoned with garlic, mint, and cilantro. They're traditionally made at home, and even though they're incredibly popular in Lebanon, you'd be hard-pressed to find them in restaurants there.


Germany: Maultaschen
Originating in the historical German region of Swabia (in today's Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria), this dumpling is traditionally filled with a mixture of minced meat, smoked meat, spinach, breadcrumbs, onions, herbs, and spices. They're square or rectangular, usually about 3 to 5 inches across, and legend has it that they were invented to be eaten during Lent, with the joke being that because the meat is hidden, God can't see it.