Dumpling Lasagna Recipe: The Viral TikTok Dinner With Pork, Wonton Wrappers and Chili Crisp

The dumpling has been reduced to its laziest possible form: you no longer fold it. Dumpling lasagna, a TikTok-born dish in which seasoned pork is layered between square wonton wrappers and baked or steamed in a dish, has been working its way up cooks' feeds for months. In October it was still turning up on both a restaurant's short video and a general roundup, Golden House in Tucson posting a soup dumpling lasagna hack on 19 October, and a Yahoo Creators list of viral TikTok recipes, updated on 31 October, placing it first, crediting the creator @heresyourbite.

The appeal for a young cook is easy to see. Folding 40 dumplings takes an evening and some practice. Layering the same filling takes ten minutes, and the result, soft sheets of wrapper around juicy, ginger-heavy pork with a sticky chili-crisp sauce on top, tastes recognisably like a dumpling dinner. It also suits the winter: one dish, one oven, no deep fryer.

The trick, as with any dumpling, is the filling, so this recipe builds it the traditional way. Salted cabbage is squeezed dry, a splash of stock is beaten into the pork until it turns sticky, and the whole thing is cooked covered so the top layer steams instead of drying out.

Ingredients

Serves 4 to 6. Total time about 1 hour 5 minutes.

• 500 g minced pork (preferably 20 per cent fat)
• 150 g white or napa cabbage, very finely shredded
• 1/2 tsp fine salt, for the cabbage
• 4 spring onions, finely sliced, plus extra to finish
• 3 garlic cloves, finely grated
• 20 g fresh ginger, finely grated
• 3 tbsp light soy sauce
• 1 tbsp Shaoxing rice wine
• 1 tsp toasted sesame oil
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp ground white pepper
• 1 tbsp cornflour
• 60 ml chicken stock or water
• 2 tsp chili crisp, for the filling
• About 24 square wonton wrappers (one 250 g pack)
• Neutral oil, for the dish
• For the sauce: 3 tbsp light soy sauce, 1 tbsp black or rice vinegar, 1 tsp sesame oil, 1 tsp sugar, 1 tbsp chili crisp, 1 tbsp sesame seeds

Method

1. Toss the cabbage with the 1/2 tsp salt in a bowl and leave for 10 minutes. Squeeze it hard in a clean tea towel to remove as much liquid as you can.
2. Heat the oven to 200 C (180 C fan). Oil a 20 cm square baking dish, and put a roasting tin big enough to hold it in the oven with a kettle of just-boiled water ready.
3. In a large bowl, mix the pork, squeezed cabbage, spring onions, garlic, ginger, soy sauce, wine, sesame oil, sugar, pepper, cornflour and chili crisp. Add the stock a spoonful at a time, stirring in one direction for 2 minutes until the mixture turns sticky and looks paler.
4. Cover the base of the dish with a layer of 6 wrappers, overlapping them a little so there are no gaps. Spread one third of the filling over them, pressing it level with damp fingers.
5. Repeat with another layer of wrappers and filling, then a third, finishing with a final layer of wrappers pressed flat on top. Brush the top with a little oil.
6. Cover the dish tightly with foil and set it in the roasting tin. Pour 2 cm of boiling water into the tin around the dish.
7. Bake for 30 minutes. Remove the foil and bake for 5 more minutes, until the top wrappers are tender and slightly glossy and the pork reads at least 75 C in the centre.
8. Whisk together the sauce ingredients. Rest the dish for 5 minutes, then cut into squares, spoon over the sauce and finish with spring onions.

Tips, swaps and storage

Wonton wrappers are sold in the chilled section of most Asian grocers and many supermarkets. Square gyoza wrappers are thicker and need 5 minutes longer. Do not leave out the stock, which is what keeps the middle juicy, and do not skip the cabbage squeeze, which is what stops the dish going soggy.