Colored Dumplings

Most of Helen’s dumpling wrappers begin with the same basic recipe: 2 cups of all-purpose
flour, ¾ cup of water, an egg white (for elasticity), and a pinch of salt. To turn any of these
doughs technicolor, she adds a half-pound of vegetable purée to the mix, with the help of a
blender or food processor.

Spinach is ideal for green skins, Helen says, and I love using it for vegetable dumplings.
Beets turn wrappers a heady crimson, and complement lamb or beef fillings. Helen uses
pumpkin to shade dumplings yellow, and carrots for orange, which both go well with
pork dumplings. She’s still looking for an ideal blue and purple coloring. Blueberries
didn’t work out, she tells me. I suggested she try butterfly pea flower tea.

To get started, wash and chop your vegetables into small pieces and toss them in the
blender with just enough of your ¾ cup of lukewarm water to get the machine going
(this takes ¼ cup for me). Then slowly add the remaining water while blending on
medium speed, then high, until you get a smooth purée. You’ll probably have to tamp
down the mixture with a wooden spoon a couple times in between pulses to incorporate
all the vegetable mass; try not to add extra water along the way. And don’t worry about
straining. Helen says she considers visible bits of spinach or carrot fiber in a wrapper to
be a feature, not a bug, a reminder that you’re eating actual vegetables.

Once you have your purée, add it to a large bowl containing your flour, salt, and egg white, and
mix the dumpling dough like you would any other (we have full instructions for this in the recipe
below). Because you’re adding extra moisture to the dough, you’ll need to compensate with
additional flour—at least another cup, possibly even two, incorporated in two kneading rounds
with a 15- to 30-minute rest in between.

Don’t be afraid to be generous with the bench flour either; the dough will show you how
much flour it needs depending on the exact moisture content of your vegetables. For this
dough, Helen says, your goal is a baby-skin-soft satiny texture that gives way to your
finger like a soft gummy candy, or the gel of a shoe insert.

When you’re bulking up a dumpling dough with vegetable matter and extra flour, you’ll
either want to scale up your filling amounts by around 50% or store the remaining
dough for later. Triple wrapped in plastic wrap, it’ll keep in the freezer for a rainy day, so
you can wow yourself with a rainbow of dumplings all over again.