Frozen Dumpling Taste Test

Surprisingly, everyone has different tastes when it comes to potstickers - some people enjoy chewier skins and juicier fillings while others prefer thin crispy skins and dry fillings. Thus I’ve chosen not to order this list as rankings based on my tastes may not make sense for you.

Instead, I invited 10 diners to a blind taste test of an assortment of pan-fried pork dumplings. I tried to keep them as consistent as possible by choosing ones primarily with pork and cabbage.

After accumulating all of their comments, I consolidated the data into “taste profiles” for each dumpling. These try to describe the flavor and used objective descriptors rather than attempting to create a subjective ranking. I have however attributed a 1-4 star rating for each dumpling based on general sentiment because I don’t have fucking time for your “but wait, which one is the best?” bullshit.

Q&A

Two questions you guys are definitely going to ask and I don’t have fucking time for these either so:

1. What’s the difference between a gyoza and a potsticker?

A potsticker is a pan-fried Chinese dumpling, named for it’s tendency to stick to the pan when cooking. The Japanese decided this was cool so they took the same thing and made with thinner skin and more finely chopped filling because Japanese like delicate shit.

2. If you want to pan-fry dumplings don’t you need to buy specially labeled potstickers at the store instead?

No.

Results

Without further ado, here’s the list of dumplings we tried: