• 1 lb ground chicken or pork (or you can use shrimp)
• 3 med/lg leaves of cabbage (i use napa or regular green)
• bunch of chives (chinese if you can find them)
• 2 stalks green onions
• 1 t grated fresh ginger (peel off the skin then grate)
• 2 T soy sauce
• 1 T sesame oil (dark sesame oil, the really strong stuff)
• 2 T sake
• 50 store bought wrappers (i use the round) or make your own potsticker wrappers

Rinse, dry (a salad spinner works good) and chop/slice the cabbage, onion and chives. Combine with rest of ingredients and gently (over-handling of meat will make it tough) incorporate ingredients, bare hands work well to mix.

At this point you can test your flavor before you stuff your dumplings by frying up a little bit of your filling without the wrapper. You may want to add more soy sauce, sake or other ingredients not listed here; garlic, raw egg, hoisin sauce, or whatever strikes your fancy.

Fill your dumplings and seal the egdes (i keep a little bowl of water nearby and line the edges so they stick). There are all sorts of ways to fold them, there are fancy methods with little ripples along the edge, or you can just squish them together flat. If i find an illustration on the web, i'll stick a link here for you.

Brown the sides (you can do one side or several, i usually do 3 sides, because i like the crispy part) with a lid on them (especially important if cooking frozen potstickers) and then add some water or stock, cover and steam to finish cooking. Experiment with different cooking temperatures, steaming etc., you can also boil them or add them to soup.

FREEZING: I usually make up a batch and then freeze, because there are so many and i can't eat that many at one sitting. After filling, place potstickers on a cookie sheet lightly dusted with cornstarch, cover with saran wrap and put in freezer. When frozen (usually overnight) transfer them into a ziplock bag or tupperware.