Every continent has a dumpling. And today we’re gonna find out which one’s the best. Hey, welcome to Mythical Kitchen. Good news, today we are going on a global adventure. Now you don’t need a suitcase. You don’t need a real id. All you need are some dumplings. ’cause today we’re traveling around the entire world. Every single continent has made some sort of a dumpling. We’ve done this before with fried chicken, with noodles, and I think it’s really fascinating to see all of the similarities that you can find between cultures and sort of track. All of the patterns throughout history. You can tell the entire world story in the form of a dumpling, but first, there’s a lot of different looking things right here. How exactly are these all dumplings? You can really only look at this through a very American lens. We use the term dumpling to mean so many different things, and we may have stretched some definitions here, but we’re considering a dumpling any sort of filling that is wrapped in dough and either steamed, baked or fried, you might ask, how is a Xiaolongbao similar to a calzone? Relatively unclear, but the term dumpling is very vague. If you look at say, a gyoza and American chicken and dumplings, the dumplings and chicken and dumplings are more like noodles. We’ve used the term dumpling to just kind of mean a round mass of dough. But that said, every single culture across the world basically figured out it’s really good to wrap food in other food and likely dip it in tasty liquid food. And we are going to explore all of that right here. God, I can’t wait to eat all these. First up, we are going down to South America. We’re going all the way to Argentina and we are eating empanadas. This is maybe the most famous Argentinian food export. And one of the things I find really interesting is Empanada is obviously a Spanish, where they speak Spanish in Argentina, despite the fact that the population of Argentina is 47% Italian, and you actually see that in a lot of different Argentinian food. Thinking about like the, the fugazzeta pizza, they have a lot of different Italian influences there. Now, the term empanar, if you really break it down, etymologically, God, that’s my favorite word other than empanada. It comes to the word empanar, which literally means to wrap and bread. Pan meaning bread, you can see that in like beef steak and panza, which soy means breaded steak. But this is just your pretty standard meat pie. And if you really trace the origins of this, you can take it back to Spain. Now, Spain, they have a couple regions where they do make things called empanadas. Mostly in the northwest you have Galicia Yes, it is pronounced Galicia. No, I did not study abroad, but the empanada was taken from Spain all the way down to Argentina. But how did the empanada get to Spain? We’re gonna see a lot of similarities here. It was likely brought from ancient Persia through the Arabic world, down through North Africa, where the Moors occupied Spain for a long, long, long time, and then that somehow migrated all the way over to South America, where frankly they kind of perfected it, or at least made it their most popular dish in a lot of the Spanish speaking Latin American world. You do see very similar dishes. Think about like the Pastos from Cuba, uh, but truly Argentina made it their own. We’re about to eat it with some Argentinian ketchup, AKA chimichurri. Here’s how I made it. I heated a pan with olive oil and sauteed my onions. I added my garlic and red pepper, and I cooked it down. Then I added chili powder, cumin, paprika, beef, bouillon, and oregano. I added ground beef and seasoned it up with salt and pepper. Then I cooked it until it was nice and brown. I folded in the olives, green onion, chopped hard-boiled eggs, and let it cool completely for the dough. I mixed everything together and kneed it into a ball. I placed the dough in a grease bowl, covered it with plastic, and let it rest for about an hour. I rolled the dough out and used a ring mold to cut out some wrappers. I added the filling to the center and folded the dough into a semicircle. I used a method called repulgue to seal the empanadas by folding and pressing the edges of the dough over and over and over. I brushed the empanadas with egg wash and baked ’em at 375 degrees for about 25 ish minutes until they’re nice, golden brown, and delicious. And here they are. Golden brown. Delicious. I’m gonna crack this open again. There are so many different ways to fill an empanada. You can get the good like. Spinach, mushroom and cheese. I was like my favorite when I was a kid. But like this classic ground beef mixture is what I think of when I think of empanadas. And of course the chimi choy here. This is made not in a blender. Never blend your chimichurri. Leonel. Messi will get mad at you. That’s Argentina’s God. I believe that’s how this works. They worship him. Yes. Uh, also fascinating about Jimmy Cherry. It likely comes from a bask root word, which you see that construction of like the chest sound a lot. Cheers. Mm. Oh my dude, this is so freaking good, to me, the key is really the chimichurri. It just adds a level of like lightness, brightness, or spaciousness. And I know, is this a dumpling? Is it not a dumpling? According to our incredibly vague rules of dumpling- hood, it absolutely is, but it is also. A pie. And again, you see so many similar dishes like this. We could have gone to like Venezuela and done like Rapas or Arabas, but to me, you just can’t talk about South America without talking about empanada right here. Let you hop over the next continent. We were down in Argentina. Now we are going to go back up. We are going to El Salvador over to North America. El Salvador is of course in Central America, and I only know they’re considered North America because of who they play soccer against. That’s kinda how I see the world. It’s in terms of like soccer players and dumplings, and I don’t think that’s totally invalid, but I love pupusas so much. And these are pupusas de la roco, which is one of my favorite things in the world. You can get anything filled in a pupusas. There’s pupusa de la rerta, which is with like pork, cheese and beans, but Lo Roco is such a special plant. It is actually a creeping vine. Native to El Salvador, and what they do is they take the flower buds before they actually blossom and then they pick them. You can get fresh roco when it’s in season, or you can get it pickled and b brined, and that’s what we got going on in here. One of the coolest things about pupusas to me is that this is purely an indigenous dish. This actually was likely invented about 2000 years ago. With the Pepel tribe down in what is now modern day El Salvador. This is before cheese was ever brought from the Spaniards to the Americas. This is before they were raising large animals. So typically this would be filled with stuff like lo roco or even local squash and different mushrooms. And you can also tell the history of the world through what greens are being used. So empanadas, obviously wheat flour to create some sort of pie dough, but here we are using maa de mais, which is of course corn flour. That has been automized, which like made folic acid bioavailable by treating the corn with lye, breaking down certain parts of it on the outside, thus making it able to sustain large empires like the Mayas and the Aztecs. To me, this dish is so cool because. It survives and thrives in modern day. Like I would go get pupusas after a show or just for a casual weekday lunch. We got a great pupusaria right by my house, but it also tells the history of the world in a lot of ways. Also, pupusas were made popular in America because the US and the CIA funded a civil war in the country. Making a lot of Salvadorans come to the United States. National pupusas Day is celebrated in November, and I always make sure to celebrate God dang it, and this is how I made it for the dough. I combined masa harena with warm water, oil, and salt. I mixed the dough until it was smooth and pliable. Then I let it rest for 15 minutes. For the Cort, I added cabbage, carrot, onion, sugar, salt, oregano, and some white wine vinegar to a bowl and mix it together. I oiled up my hand and scooped out some dough. I shaped it into a bowl. Then I took my palm and flattened the dough out to form a bowl shape. I filled the center with cheese and lo roco, and then I sealed the dough and re flattened it on a hot, oiled cast iron. Normally it would be cooked on a Kamal. I cooked each side of the pupusas until it was lightly browned. We topped it with some tito and served it with a side of salsa roja. Now we’re gonna eat it. This is how, listen, when I go to the farmer’s market, y’all get the bag of Tito and you empty it on top, and then you pour the super tomato sauce over the top. It’s not spicy at all. A lot of people mistakenly think that a lot of food from Central America would be spicy. In my experience, it hasn’t been the case. Certainly everyone everywhere likes to eat spicy food at some point. But this salsa is not spicy. Look at that cheese pull. Typically you might use like a, a white cheese called queseo, but we just use mozzarella ’cause like all cheese kind of came to El Salvador and held to Mexico even, uh, from Spain at some point. But like this to me is one of the best bites in the world. You see the Laroco in there? That’s that like little flower, but it’s got this like beautiful kind of vegetal tang to it. Yum. Hell yeah, brother. This is one of the most balanced dishes in the entire world because you get like in every dumpling you get that sort of like comforting ness, right? That’s like the baseline that all dumplings thrive off of. All of the filling is only as good as that, like sumptuous dough holding it. Then you get that super salty cheese and then this like briny flavor that you would never expect coming from the Laroco. And if that wasn’t enough, you just have this like acidic tomato salsa. Again, tomatoes are a new world plant. Tomatoes would’ve been in El Salvador for thousands of years before they ever got to Europe. You have this nice crunchy cabbage slaw. The pupusas to me is just like an absolute beautiful dish. And again, you can fill it with anything. If you ever go to a pupusaria, please find a pupusaria. Get like. Six different pupusars, sharing ’em with friends. It’s one of the best foods in the world. Listen, it is my sincere hope that you watch this video and you go seek out one of these dumplings from a local restaurant. However, I know what’s going to happen is you’re gonna watch this go, man, I want dumplings. Then you’re gonna reach for the dumplings that you have in your freezer that are getting frostbitten, and you’re gonna go, damn, I wish I knew which dumpling sauce went with these frozen dumplings. But you can go to sporked.com, check out their full rankings of dumpling sauces. Go check it out. Holy smokes. We got new dumplings, now we’re going all the way over to Asia. Now I got a bone to pick. Normally I would think that bone is with how the world has been geographically divided into continents. But then I realized that, ah, I’m the only one who decided to break this down by continents because there’s 8 billion people in the world and 5 billion of those people live in Asia, and there is a massive, massive amount of diversity in Asia from. Kazakhstan to Sri Lanka, to Korea. It’s really tough to draw like similar lines there just ’cause it’s what east of the Euro Mountains. Anyways, there are so many dumplings to choose from Asia specifically because dumplings likely originated in Asia, probably in China with like 2000 years ago. We picked a hometown favorite since I couldn’t decide. Now, a lot of you know, I grew up in an area called Little Saigon. I’ve eaten a lot of Vietnamese spend my time. This is one of the most unique dishes over there. You got things like cha, which is the, uh, imperial rolls that are really delicious, but this is called. So this is actually a cassava flower dumpling. You can see they’re kind of translucent here. I always assume that cassava was native to Southeast Asia, but as it turns out, it was brought to Vietnam from Portuguese or Spanish traitors all the way from South America where it’s indigenous several hundred years ago. Now, this dish originated in the province of Hui, which is in central Vietnam, which is typically known as like the royal province, where a lot of really delicious dishes came from boonbaway or just Hui style beef noodle soup is one of the most delicious things in the world, and where my love of coagulated pork blood came from. There’s a lot of different colonial influences in Vietnam. Obviously you see a lot from the French. You also see a lot of Chinese cultural influence, but there’s a lot of other countries that also had a lot of stake in Vietnam, including Portugal. And I think it’s kind of interesting to see that at play in one dumpling. And here’s how I made it. I combined the tapioca starch water, oil, and salt in a pot and whisk until I had no lumps. I put it on the heat and brought it to a simmer on medium high and whisked constantly until it turned into a loose paste. I sauteed the pork belly. Then I added the shallots and garlic. I added the anato seeded oil to give it some color, and then I cooked my shrimp. I seasoned it all with fish sauce and salt. I placed the dough on a blanched banana leaf, added the filling, then wrapped them up. I garnished it with scallion oil and we’re serving it with the side of nook, chum, or prepared fish sauce. Damn. Now there’s no more side of nook chum. This is how, this is how you do it. You absolutely drench it in the nook, chum. You get some of those chilies on there. Uh, this is really cool. I know what you’re probably saying, Josh. When I eat bon butt look, it’s like in the shape of a crescent, it kind of looks like a ravioli or a pierogi. There’s actually two different methods. So steaming in the banana leaf is not necessarily the most common method, but it is very, very traditional. And also I’ll eat any food steamed in a banana leaf. You see it from south and Central America all the way to Southeast Asia and a lot of indigenous cultures, banana leaves were like nature’s first ever. Cling film. Cling film. What the hell is cling film? That’s what my like grandma used to say. Look at that dude. The shrimp and pork belly’s just like suspended in there. God, this is beautiful. Hmm. We got some chili wet. Hold up. Dude. Yep. Take a shot of nook rum. Why has no one done a nook Rum martini. You guys wanna drink something? I know it worked, but like this is so, so incredible. The flavors of Vietnam, specifically, this right here, it’s sugar, it’s lime, it’s chili, it’s garlic, it’s fish sauce. It’s like all the things that you want. You could soak anything in that as guy fii. The profit would say, you could put that on a flip flop and I would eat it, but it ain’t no flip flop. It’s on bun. But look, and this incredible, the texture of the cassava is so, so, so unique. You also see this in China though with certain what they call crystal dumplings or like hard G is probably the most famous one. But to me it’s all of that fish sauce seasoning inside the pork belly that just gets like suspended in the miasma of that. Ah, truly one of my favorite things in the world. So, so, so unique. How is this related to the empanada? Kind of unclear, but at the same time, meat wrapped in dough cooked man, what a treat. Look at this wet sack of deliciousness. Yes, that was my nickname in high school. It is also what I call Georgian khinkali. These dumplings to me are so, so, so cool. I’ve also eaten a fair amount of these in Los Angeles because there’s not a big Georgian population, but there is a big Armenian population in Los Angeles. There’s a lot of crossover between Armenian food and Georgian food, Armenian culture, Georgian culture, Georgia. We’re calling this Europe. However, if you look on a map, boy is it really far east? It is even farther east than Turkey. However, it is technically considered Europe, I guess, depending on who you ask, uh, because it is. Supposedly culturally, Europe, the Republic of Georgia was also part of the Soviet Union for damn near 70 years, and Vladimir Putin has launched multiple wars against the Republic of Georgia, but has such a unique position, which has given it such a unique culture. It is just situated in the mountains in this beautiful fertile valley. There is historic poetry, historic wine making going back thousands of years in Georgia and also these dumpling. Now you might say, these look very similar to xiaolongbao, to a Chinese dumpling. And that is also because if you go back 800 years, modern day, Georgia was just a part of the Mongol Empire. So literally the empire that spanned all the way from Korea on the east to Georgia and beyond in the West carried the same sort of. Dumpling mechanics. This was actually likely a Mongol dish that they would use to just preserve meat by wrapping it in an airtight filling. There’s also a restaurant in LA called the Tuman and khinkali Factory, and they were trying to be like the Georgian Din Tai fun. And that place absolutely ripped, and I miss it. So I really want to eat these now in the mountain it region of Georgia, north of the capital city to Bei, the khinkali is seen as a sort of offering to the sun. Even the 28 pleats in the dumpling are generally symbolic of the solar cycles. This dish has so much rich meaning in history. And I really want to eat it. But first, here’s how I made it. I combined flour, water, and salt to create a dough and needed it until it sprung back. I covered it and let it rest for an hour. For the filling, I combined freshly ground lamb and minced onion, red pepper flakes, ground caraway seed, salt, gelatinized, lamb stock, and cilantro. Now the filling should be really wet when you add it to the dumpling wrappers. I rolled out the dough and used a ring mold to cut out the wrappers. I then added the filling and pleaded it until the filling was completely sealed in. Then I twisted off the extra dough at the top. I added the dumplings to simmering salted water and cooked them for about eight minutes until the filling was nice, cooked and hot. Let’s dig in here. Oh, you cut in and you just see all of that soup pour out. Damn. Look at that. It really is like a kind of thicker version of xiaolongbao. The thing that I love about this, you’re so used to that flavor profile from a she long bow, but then you cut into this and you just smell all that raw grated onion, which is like very, very common meat flavoring used in that area. In Armenia, They’re doing very similar things and then just that little hit of caraway, but also. It’s the lamb. I mean, this is like a classic like sheep herders dish. The lamb in there is so funky. The meat shines so much for itself. It’s almost like if you imagine drinking fub broth next to like a deli chicken noodle soup broth, the fub broth is gonna have. So much more flavor, right? More complexity. But then there’s something comforting about the simplicity of that, like deli chicken noodle soup sometimes where it just tastes of a couple different ingredients, but you taste all of those. I don’t care if I’m being rude, but even with my hands, this is absolutely delicious. Get yourself or side of Hacha Puti. Dip that bread and all the broth, man, what a treat. How many more dumplings do we gotta eat? I can do this all day. We are going to Africa. Remember that whole spiel I had about like Asia kind of being one continent, but a lot of different people with a lot of different cultures in different foods. Africa is very much the same way. In fact, when you study demographics, they often use the term MENA or Middle East, north Africa, because we’re going over to Tunisia and this is a dish called. I’m pronouncing that with my 11th grade French education here, because French is one of the more commonly spoken languages in Tunisia. The national language is Arabic, but still about 50% of people in Tunisia do speak French. Again, due to colonization, but also just due to proximity. There’s a lot of different African dumplings we could have gone with. I had something called dum bolo that’s like a steam dumpling in South Africa. That was really good. But I think this is really interesting because of the similar names that you can see all throughout. Not only the Middle East, but all the way to the Balkan. So this is called Greek or spelled like brik. You might know something called borek. You might also know something called borek. You might also, if you’re Greek know Boureka, you might know Boreg This is like the same dish, but translated through a uniquely Tunisian lens because you see the main catch from Tunisia here. Tuna, ironically, because they catch so much tuna. You might think Tunisia was named for the tuna or vice versa. It is not true at all, just a mere coincidence. But in Tunisia, the Greek is often eaten during Iftar, which is the meal that breaks the fast during Ramadan. There are also potentially connections to Sephardic Jews who brought Breas all the way over to the Balkans, but also likely the sort of pastry filled meat concoction through Moorish Spain. There’s just so much history. In this dish, and God, I can’t wait to eat it. It’s also filled with a whole egg. And here’s how we made it. I mashed my boiled potatoes. Then I added olive oil and salt and pepper to taste. I added the tuna, capers, parsley, tablo spice mix, and two eggs. I combined everything and I let that mixture cool. I took three sheets of filo dough. Typically, you would use MAs Luca dough and folded in the sides to form a square. I added the filling and formed it into a disc in the center. Then I put an egg in the center of that and folded the dough over to create a triangle. I shallow fried it in a pan until it was golden brown, and I have no idea how that egg is cooked. And now I’m here. Let’s, let’s crack this open. Wait, wait. Lemon. If you’re not lemon enough, your bricks. What are you doing, Doug? So this looks like a giant piece of fried fish. There’s that whole egg. Wait a take. I gotta gotta dive into the egg. This is a new thing that I’ve never seen before. This I’ve had a lot of like, uh, bleak that are, I can’t, I can’t figure out how to pronounce it without sounding like such a douche bag. I’ve had a lot of bricks. I’ve met a lot of bricks in my life that were generally a lot smaller than this. Um, but this one, if you put that whole egg inside of it, nice little treat. It’s crazy ’cause it, it smells like the ocean. We are so used to the tuna fish that we eat in America, like just kind of being on a deli tray. But tuna’s used in so many different applications, especially in North Africa, which I love of. It is so hot. I feel steam coming out that just to cool it down. This feels so familiar because again, we use philo. It’s typically a dough called MAs Luca, which actually likely came from China and spring roll rappers traveling through Persia to the Arabic and down into North Africa. But. It is such a familiar crunch of having something like spinacopeta, right? But then you get such a unique flavor profile, things that I would never think to combine with the potato, the tuna, the egg, the caper, and that parsley in there. It’s so like light and bright from all of that lemon, but it’s also just like crispy. I mean, this is like a delicious briny seaside, a hot pocket that I’ve never had before. I’ve never specifically had the tuna one, and this is just like really? It feels hot. Really fascinating. Especially when you look at like a lot of black with like cheese. Like me. Good. Look at his light. It’s bright it. Imagine the Mediterranean Sea on a boat. Damn. Listen, it’s a lot to make at home. I don’t know if you can find this anywhere near you, but like seek out some bleak. I was gonna try and figure out how to say something in French, then I sounds right. If anyone translates that, I’ll give you three bucks in the comments. Now the last stop on our voyage here is Oceania. There’s a lot we could have chosen from here. Again, the, the continent situation is weird, but there’s something called like Dim Salmon Australia. But I wanted to try an indigenous food culture that frankly I don’t know much about. This is soksok from Pop Wood New Guinea. Now this is basically made with all the plants that are native to Papua New Guinea. You see bananas, you see several different cultivars that are native to Papua New Guinea, and this is made with. What I thought were tapioca balls. I’ll get into that in a second. I saw soksok as a tapioca dumpling wrapped in a banana leaf and steamed, and I was like, oh my God, that’s so similar to Al. Look over in Vietnam. But as it turns out, we kind of use the word tapioca to mean two different things. ’cause you can use tapioca to mean the starch of cassava, which is a native South American tuber that was brought to Vietnam. Or people use the term tapioca to refer to something called sago. Sago is not related to cassava at all. And that is what we find in here. Sago is actually an incredible process where you take the pulp of the root of a type of sago, palm tree that grows in Papua New Guinea, and you go through incredible measures to harvest and process and purify, and then eventually cook it into these delicious little tapioca balls. This is such a cool food that I’ve never had before. In Papua New Guinea, the history of it really interesting, especially when you look at the fact that the US and Japan kind of just used it as a battlefield during World War ii. Uh, absolutely like decimating a lot of the island, but foods like this still live on to tell the story, and I’m really excited to eat this. Here’s how we made it. I peeled and mash ripened banana and sprinkled in shredded coconut and sugar. I added the hydrated sago, tap yoka pearls, and mixed it together to form a paste. I waved a banana leaf over a flame to make it pliable enough to fill. Then I added the filling to the banana leaf and folded it into a rectangle. I steamed the dumplings for about 15 minutes, then I unwrapped it and served it with warm sweetened coconut milk. This looks absolutely delicious. If you showed me this and asked me to guess. The origin of it, I would probably say something like Indonesia, it has that kind of gelatinous look of like a jaja pasar or like a kind of a, a gelatinized confection over there, but it also looks kind of distinctly Chinese in a way. And then hell, you could even think it was some sort of tamale because a lot of tamales are wrapped in the banana leaf. Like that. This is like utterly fascinating. I have no idea what it’s gonna taste like. Steamed banana, sago pearl sweet coconut milk. What’s not to love? This is like my ideal dessert. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. That’s incredible. It’s just barely lightly sweet from a little bit of the sugar that we added to the coconut milk, but it’s just like bursting with coconut and banana flavor. Two of my favorite flavors in the entire world. And then you have those sago pearls. I’ve had sago in different Southeast Asian desserts. Right? They’ll add them to even things like halo halo in the Philippines, but I’ve never had it steamed like this. This is such an incredible texture, such an incredible flavor. It’s so like understated, but also delicious. Like you don’t need to rely on refined sugar to get that sort of sweetness. There’s all this like sweet aromatic from the coconut and the banana. Damn. This ain’t your dad’s cozy shack tapioca pudding, though that is really delicious as well. But like literally some of the same plant that ended up in Cozy Shack tapioca pudding that my dad used to eat is also natively eaten as this delicious, steamed dumpling in Papua New Guinea to the essence of bananas. Just like off the charts, I could eat so many of those. It’s so warm and comforting and absolutely delicious. And thus wraps up our journey around the world and dumplings. It’s so interesting to see the similarities to the differences cultures that are thousands upon thousands of miles apart and thousands of years away from the genesis of each other, kind of ending up in similar places of like wrapping starch in banana leaves and seeming them over a fire of figuring out how to extrude dough into long sheets and then frying them until it’s something. Delicious and crispy, using the miracle of an ancient grain that was fortified to bring out the nutrients in it, and then smashing it with cheese and flowers inside of it, and then my drunk ass eaten it in Los Angeles, thousands of years later. This has been an absolute trip. Oh, we forgot one, damnit, the final continent, Antarctica dumplings, ice. If we look at the name Ice etymologically, you can trace it to the Norwegian Ice for Ice. Well, thank you so much for stopping by. I hope you learned something. I hope you were inspired to go out, seek some of these foods from local restaurants, or at least pop some of those frozen dumplings you got in the microwave. Really appreciate y’all stopping by. We’ll see y’all next time. Head over to sporked.com to check out the Sporked Team’s full list of the best dumpling sauces for every type of dumpling.