Stylish Korean Recipes & more: [Korean] Yubu mandu (fried tofu dumplings)

Yubu mandu is a dumpling with skin made of fried tofu. You can eat it alone or in a soup with other things. The picture above shows yubu mandu in a fish cake soup.

Ingedients:

fried tofu pouches (As many as you need. Probably about 6. See below for picture)

1/2 tofu brick (9 oz.)

1/3 pound beef (any cut is fine)

1 finger-loop of Korean vermicelli

1 large green onion stalk, minced

2-3 cloves minced garlic

1 Tbsp soy sauce

1 tsp sesame oil

salt and pepper to taste

Method:

First, soak the vermicelli in water to make it soft (it should take about 15 minutes).

Meanwhile, mince the beef, green onions, and garlic, and mix with the tofu, soy sauce, salt, pepper, and sesame oil. When the vermicelli is soft, mince that too and mix it in with everything else. It should look like this when you're done.

Now, cut one side of the fried tofu pouches open. The pouches look like this:

You can find these in the freezer at a Korean grocery.

Stuff the tofu pouches with the filling you made. Use as many as you need. Be careful not to tear the tofu pouches while you're filling them.

Usually you tie the open end of the tofu pouches with parsley sprigs, but if you don't have any of those or something similar you can just be gentle with the mandu while you're cooking it. Cook the dumplings by boiling or steaming them until the meat is done (probably 10 minutes or so). You can cook them and eat them alone, or put them into a soup.

If you want to make a soup, yubu mandu goes well with Korean fish cakes. To make this kind of soup, first you'll need to make the stock.

Boil some anchovies, Korean-style radish, green onion, dried kelp, shiitake mushrooms and a little pepper for about 10-15 minutes.

After you boil these together, take out and discard everything except the mushrooms and add various fish cakes (there are many to choose from at any Korean grocery. They will be in the freezer) and vegetables.