Manty (Turkmen Steamed Dumplings)

Also called Turkmen steamed dumplings, manti, mantu, kädili manty

Steamed Turkmen dumplings in a thin dough, with a pumpkin, meat and pumpkin, or spinach filling.

Ingredients

Scale

Pan sizes, times and temperatures in the method are not scaled.

Dough

Filling 1: pumpkin

Filling 2: meat and pumpkin

Filling 3: spinach

To serve

Method

Dough

  1. Beat the egg (1), water (210 ml¾ cup + 2 tbsp), salt (6 g1 tsp) and oil (14 g1 tbsp) together, then mix into the flour (500 g4¼ cups).

  2. Knead 8 to 10 minutes, until smooth. The dough will be softer and slightly tacky at first.

  3. Wrap it and rest a full hour at room temperature.

Filling

  1. Pumpkin: toss everything except the salt together ahead of time. Add the salt just before filling, because salted pumpkin starts weeping liquid within 20 to 30 minutes. Meat and pumpkin: mix everything well. Spinach: toss the spinach with ¾ tsp of the salt, leave it 10 minutes, then squeeze out the liquid by the handful. Mix it with the onion, scallions, oil, pepper and the rest of the salt.

Rolling

  1. Cut the dough into 6 pieces and keep the ones you aren't working with wrapped.

  2. On the KitchenAid roller, run a piece through setting 1 a few times, folding it in half between passes. Then work down to setting 5, about 1 mm. Flour the roller well.

  3. Cut the sheets into 4½-inch squares and keep them under a towel. You can re-roll the scraps once.

Shaping

  1. Put a heaped tablespoon of filling, about 25 g, in the center of each square. Keep the filling and any oil off the edges.

  2. Pinch two opposite corners together over the filling, then the other two.

  3. Seal the four side seams along their full length.

  4. Pinch neighboring corner points together to form the rosette. Keep the pinches tight and small, and press the points thin; that's where the dough gets tough.

  5. Set them on a floured tray, not touching.

Steaming

  1. Oil the steamer tiers or line them with perforated parchment. Bring the water to a full boil first.

  2. Space the manty ½ inch apart and steam, covered, at a strong boil: 30 minutes for pumpkin or spinach and 35 minutes for meat and pumpkin, or from frozen, 40 to 45 minutes for pumpkin or spinach and 45 to 50 minutes for meat and pumpkin.

  3. Open one to check before you take the batch out. The pumpkin should be fully soft, and the meat juices should run clear (160°F).

  4. For long steams, top up the pot with boiling water from a kettle halfway through.

  5. Serve with sour cream or yogurt, black pepper, and chili oil or a little vinegar.

Notes

  • Any one filling is enough for the whole batch of dough. To make two kinds, halve each one.
  • Fat. Oil is the more traditional choice in the pumpkin and spinach fillings; butter works too.
  • No pasta roller? Roll each piece with a rolling pin as thin as you can, about 1 mm.
  • Freezing. Freeze the shaped manty on their floured tray until hard, then bag them. Steam from frozen.

Ingredients

Scale

Pan sizes, times and temperatures in the method are not scaled.

Dough

Filling 1: pumpkin

Filling 2: meat and pumpkin

Filling 3: spinach

To serve