Dumplings with cabbage and mushrooms They are perfect for freezing for the holiday table. If you do it right, no one will know it’s a frozen food. They will taste like a home-made, freshly made product.
You can freeze dumplings with cabbage and mushrooms in two ways. The first is freezing semi-finished products. Form the dough into a ball, wrap it in foil and put it in the freezer, treat the stuffing in the same way. The day before Christmas Eve, remove the semi-finished products from the freezer and put them in the fridge to thaw. Then you can roll out the dough, cut out dumplings or dumplings and stuff them with stuffing. This is a proposition for those who prefer to make dumplings with cabbage and mushrooms just before serving.
The second method is to freeze ready-made dumplings. Many people ask themselves whether they need to be cooked or not before freezing. The optimal method is to freeze slightly blanched dumplings. This involves throwing them into salted boiling water for a minute. Then remove them from the water with a slotted spoon and mix with a little butter. Place the prepared dumplings with cabbage and mushrooms on a tray and let them cool. Then put the tray in the freezer for two hours. When they freeze, you can put them in ziplock bags so that there is as little air in them as possible.
If you still want to freeze raw dumplings, after making them, leave them for about 20-30 minutes on a floured board or countertop. When the surface dries slightly, they will not stick together or crack during subsequent processing. Then proceed exactly as with the blanched product, i.e. first freeze it on a tray and only then transfer it to ziplock bags. Protected in this way, they do not deform or stick together, even after long storage.
The falling apart of dumplings with mushrooms most often results from mistakes made at the stage of forming or cooking them. Dough rolled out too thin, especially when the filling is wet, loses cohesion when immersed in boiling water. If the edges of the dumplings are not sealed well, hot water quickly gets inside and causes cracking.
Cooking too quickly can also be a problem. Intensively bubbling water moves the dumplings, and delicate ones stuffed with mushrooms are more susceptible to damage. It also happens that Dumplings with mushrooms fall apart because they have been thawed beforehand. After defrosting, the dough becomes soft and prone to cracking, so it is best to throw it into the pot straight from the freezer. By following these rules, you will avoid holiday stress.
The most important rule is: dumplings with cabbage are thrown into boiling water without defrosting first. Boil water in a large pot with a pinch of salt and a tablespoon of oil, which will reduce the risk of sticking. Drop the frozen dumplings into the water in batches, stirring gently with a wooden spoon to prevent them from sticking to the bottom.
The water should be gently boiling, but not bubbling too much. Moderate cooking keeps the dough intact. After the dumplings float to the surface, cook for another 2-3 minutes and then carefully remove them with a slotted spoon. Thanks to this, they retain their perfect structure, elasticity and do not fall apart, even if the stuffing is moist and aromatic.
Source: guster.pl, Terazgotuje.pl
