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Welcome to the first episode of season 6 of the podcast! We’re starting off with a tiny little Turkish dumpling called Manti. Heather takes on the challenge of filling and folding these itty bitty tasty morsels, which are served with a garlic yogurt sauce and drizzled with chili butter.
The dough for Manti is easy to make and rolls out nicely. That’s a win because it needs to be very thin (about 3mm)! After cutting it into small squares (2 – 3 cm) and then placing a tiny bit of filling in each (our filling was ground beef and grated onion), you then fold them up, boil to cook and serve with the delicious sauces. Yes, we timed it and it took Heather about 12 sec to fold each dumpling!
Be sure to check out our socials for video of the folding technique, or you can also see it on the video for this episode on YouTube.
Be sure you’re subscribed, liking and following the show so you don’t miss new episodes – coming every Tuesday!
Get the recipe: Manti – Tiny Beef-Filled Turkish Dumplings (https://www.threekitchenspodcast.com/post/manti-turkish-dumplings)
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Three Kitchens Podcast – a home cooking show
Check out our website where you can listen to all of our episodes and find recipes on our blog: www.threekitchenspodcast.com (https://threekitchenspodcast.com/)
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You are listening to Three Kitchens podcast hosted by Aaron Walker and Heather Dyer. We’re friends trying out recipes in our own regular home kitchens. We hope our experiences will inspire you to get creative in the kitchen. And of course, eating them was extremely easy. Eating them as always is the best part. Okay. Well, here we are. Welcome everybody to Three Kitchens podcast season. Drum roll, please. Six. Six. Six. Can you believe it? I usually get it wrong. Well, we’re still at the tail end of summer, fairy tale. And um we can taste the freedom. Oh, I know. Please let them go back to school. But I wanted to take advantage of the long weekend to cook something. So, this is why we’re recording now. Yes. Um, but before we get into that, what was this kitchen adventure you just wanted to tell me about? Well, I have to admit to something which probably maybe a lot of people will laugh at, but I’ve never defrosted my fridge freezer in my kitchen ever. Okay, I’m not really laughing. I’ve done my um Have you done yours? Test freezer. Okay. A couple of times because it’s very old and it does get ice built up in it. compartment gets smaller. Well, our fridge stopped working essentially. It wasn’t cooling anything. It wasn’t freezing anything. There was ice building up like on the top of it. And of course, we were just talking before this, we’ve been out camping and we’ve been living in like coolers and boxes. And in case you’re not familiar with that type of living, it doesn’t keep your food super cool either. So, like stuff has been going bad. There’s been a few incidents with curdling cream and bad milk. And you get home and you’re like, “Finally, my creature comforts.” No, I had to empty everything out of my fridge and freezer to figure out what was going on. And then, so we had the hair dryer. We had a mass of ice in the cooling coils between the fridge and the freezer because it’s got the freezer up top, the fridge below. Mhm. So I was really like, “Oh god, like now we got to buy a new fridge.” Mhm. Anyway, so I took everything down carting. I had four Superstore buckets of stuff for my fridge that I carted down into the basement. I didn’t have any ice. Didn’t have anything to keep everything cold with. I was like, “Well, the basement’s my coolest room.” Note to self, don’t do this in the summer, but you know, it’s not like I made much of a choice. Mhm. We got it all melted out finally. And today my fridge is cold again. So I fixed the problem. Yay. Like I said, I don’t think this is even type two fun because it’s not like that enjoyable in the end. Good about it at the end of it. Not like, “Wow, I accomplished something.” It’s like, “Oh, I really should have done this sooner.” So, is it just going to happen again? Like, is it just going to build up over time and you’ll be in this position again? Well, you know, my plan is maybe not to wait 15 years before doing it again. I now know the signs and symptoms. I know how to take my fridge apart pretty good now anyway. Well, no, that’s not very fun. But I’m glad it’s working again cuz that’s an issue. Cheaper than buying a new fridge. Yeah. So, let this be a public service announcement to defrost your fridge freezer. So, what are you making over the long weekend that’s taking up extra time and getting me excited to eat something somebody else cooked? Yay. Uh, I actually I have to admit I’m now that we’ve taken a nice long break. Yes. I’m feeling inspired and kind of excited to try something new, which is I mean our whole mission here to inspire people. And so, if we don’t feel inspired, how are we going to inspire everybody listening? So, I’m kind of I’m feeling good about it. Um, anyone who’s maybe tuned in in the past probably by now knows that we here at Three Kitchens love ourselves a dumpling. I mean, who doesn’t? Yes. Really, right? We have done a few different dumplings. We’ve done stuffed dump like filled dumplings like perogi, ravioli, schumai, and not stuffed dumplings. I think you can consider a noki and spetszla. I think you could consider both of those things forms of dumpling without stuffing filling. And I have a new dumpling for us to try. I’ve never eaten it, never made it, and I’m assuming you haven’t either, although I shouldn’t assume. Perhaps I’m wrong. No, I’m not that culture. Don’t worry. It is Turkish and it is called amanti. It is a tiny or quite small stuffed dumpling, which is why I’m thinking it could take me some time because they’re small. So, you’re working with a little Oh, you get to get all those hand and finger skills. I got to do a little pinch pinch thing. Oh, sorry. Can you say the word again? Monte. I hope I’m saying that right. I’m sorry if anyone’s ears are burning while I say that. Monte. So, I’ve read different things. Some sources say it’s Armenian, some say it’s Turkish. I imagine there are varieties, um, regional differences when you go here or there. But I found a video from Rafika. Do you remember Rafika whose videos we watched to learn to make pa? Yes. She’s so great. I think it’s Rafika’s Kitchen on YouTube. So, if anyone wants to learn to cook Turkish food and you want to watch a chef, Turkish chef do it, she’s so good. Her videos are great. And so, I watched a whole video of her making these dumplings. So, I feel prepared. I feel ready to do it. Um, they can be stuffed with I think almost anything you like. I’m going to do what she did, which is ground beef. Okay. Um, and the description is the the dumpling wrapper is an inch square. We’re talking small. Yeah. Are you going to contact Are you going to call a friend for food tweezers? Nope. I’m just gonna I’m just gonna do my best with my little old old lady hands. Um, I’m just in this, you know, sometimes when you watch the videos of things you cook, we take those videos from above and I’m like, “Oh, my hands look like really old old person hands.” At least your nails always look so nice. Well, at least there’s that. My hands I’m like, “Good God, I should be putting gloves on when I do this.” Yeah. And one other recipe I looked at described the amount of filling as the size of a chickpea. So this is a small bit of filling in a teeny tiny dumpling. This is going to be the teeny tiniest dumpling I know ever made. So you eat you eat like a plate of them. You’re not eating like three of them on alongside something else. This is this isn’t going to be like a tasting menu. Well, I don’t I don’t know exactly, but Okay, I’m gonna This is why I was thinking it might take some time. Kind of got to get in the groove, roll out the dough, cut it into roughly equal squares, put a little dab of filling, pinch it together. Yeah, that is some highintensity work. Yeah. Very cool. So, is there a sauce with it? There is sort of a yo thinned yogurt that goes on top and then okay I’ve seen it two ways. Okay. One is an oil like an olive oil that is seasoned with like has um chili like chili flakes. So it’s kind of like a chili oil that you would drizzle over top of all that. Rafika had butter that she melted um and seasoned with I think chili powder. So it was sort of like a red her butter ended up looking quite red colored and then she put that over top. So it could be an a spiced oil or butter. I don’t know yet which way. It feels like a lot of like when I watched her do it, it felt like a lot of butter and I’m like do we need that much butter on our plate? As much as I love butter, I don’t I don’t know. And the price of butter right now. That’s true. But the price of oil is also Yeah. What’s the most that you’ve paid for butter this summer, Heather? Uh I haven’t paid close attention, but over seven bucks for sure, I would say. I picked up a block the other day and it was $9.49 for a pound of butter. And if I would have noticed that price at checkout and not at home, I would have I would have put it back. Yeah. Oh, yeah. For sure. I I was floored. That’s in insane. Yeah. Well, these dumplings might also be sort of insane, so I can’t wait. Well, and we can drizzle as much or as little of this oil over top as we want. I think maybe for the sake of a video on YouTube, you probably do kind of like load it up and make it look extra gooey and delicious. I imagine on the plate when you’re eating it, you don’t have to go quite so heavy on the fat, but I I don’t know. What do I know? Okay, so that’s what I’m doing. That’s why I wanted to hop on a record so that I can spend some time this long weekend folding itty bitty dumplings. I hope I don’t go completely insane. I I wish you good luck. Thank you. Hey, listener, have you visited our website? You’ll find our entire catalog of episodes. Can you believe there are more than 170 of them, including the Speak Easy Cocktail Series and almost all of our recipes? It’s easy to find. Just type in www.3kitchensspodcast.com or check the show notes for a link. Now, let’s get back to the show. Okay, so let’s talk about how to make mom tea. These delightful wee little dumplings. Delightful is right. Delightful. M. Okay. So, uh, the dough is pretty basic dumpling dough. You’ve got allpurpose flour, water, an egg, and a little bit of salt. Just mix it up with your wooden spoon till it kind of comes together. And then, if you want to knead it by hand, turn it out onto your counter and work on it for about 10 minutes. Or That sounds like I’m employing the mixer. Yes, I uh put it in my mixer with the dough hook until you have a nice kind of soft ball of dough and then cover it with a damp kitchen towel and set it aside for later. Um it doesn’t tell me how long. It just says set it aside for a while. So, I think by the time I made up my filling and got it all ready to go and kind of got myself my kitchen cleaned up and ready, like ready to assemble things, it had probably been half an hour, 40 minutes maybe. I don’t know. I feel like when they say to let a dough rest, often it’s around 15 to 30 minutes when there is a time. So, since we’re not doing anything with yeast, Yeah. I’ll put a hard bet on you’re probably good at 30 minutes. I don’t think it that’s what I was thinking too. I was like it doesn’t matter as much without yeast. Yeah. You’re just setting the gluten or whatever, right? Like it’s just kind of it’s been coming together prodded and poked and it needs a chance to like rest so that it can do its next job. I guess so. Yeah. Divide it in half roughly. Doesn’t have to be perfect. In fact, you can do that before you set it aside if you want. Just Oh, yeah. Break it into two balls. And maybe I should talk about the filling first since we’re not ready to use the dough just yet. So, everything says you can put whatever you want in them. Mushrooms, chickpeas, cheese, meat, but I went with what Rafika was doing in her uh video, which was 250 g of minced beef. I didn’t have minced. I don’t ever really see that around, so I just used ground, which I think is just slightly chunkier than minced, I assume. So what? You didn’t take your steak and slice it into tiny little Neither did she. Okay. What was it you did that for? The empanadas. Oh, right. That was a lot of work. No, according to me, ground beef is just as good. Go for it. Yes, that’s what I used. Ground beef. Um, one onion grated, a teaspoon of salt, a teaspoon of pepper, and half a teaspoon of cayenne pepper. Okay. Very basic filling. Mhm. Again, if you want it to taste like something a bit different, just make it your own. Put whatever you like in there. Now you have your uh filling ready. So, flour your counter. Lightly flour it. Put one of your halves of the dough down and roll it out with your rolling pin. And keep kind of flip it, rotate it, and roll it. And keep doing that until you get about a 50 cm in diameter circleish. Okay? It’s not going to be perfect. Believe me, it should be about 1 and 12 to 2 mm thick. I still haven’t figured out exactly how to measure how thick something is when I roll it. I think there’s tools that you can use like little But I don’t have such a thing. You don’t have your kitchen ruler? No, I actually I used to have one. It disappeared. One of the kids went off with it. Yeah. for a craft or homework or something and it I haven’t replaced it. So anyway, it’s quite thin. That is a very thin thin thin dough. Yeah, very thin. Then use a you’re going to cut this into small squares. So just use a pizza cutter or pastry cutter and just draw do lines one way, lines the other way. Oh boy. And you have all these little tiny squares. So, in her recipe notes, she says, “Traditional Monte is smaller, but this is a place to start, which is around 3 cm square.” Like, how could it be smaller than 3 cm? That’s like, is this for like child labor? Cuz I can imagine only they have the tiniest enough fingers to do this. And we have pretty tiny fingers, right? I don’t know how, having done this, I don’t know how they could be any smaller. That’s ridiculous. All right, we’re talking teeny tiny dumplings, you guys. Like, okay, tiny. Okay, so if you can manage it smaller, go for it. You’ll be you’ll be like an honorary Turkish chef. Okay. Then you’re going to put a little tiny bit of meat filling in the center of each one. So, this is still out on your counter. It’s all cut, but you’re just Now you’re putting all the filling on. I did about half of it and kept the other half of it covered with my damp towel just because I didn’t know how long it would take me to kind of get in the groove and figure out how and so I didn’t want it to kind of dry out while it was sitting there. Um, so that’s like my main question is how did you portion out the meat part? Like with my fingers. Just a pinch with your fingers. Okay, that’s what she was doing in the video. Yeah. And I think it will depend on how big your squares of dough are. You want it to be you want it to fill it, but you need room to pinch it closed. So, it is a very small bit of filling. Okay. Just pinch it with your fingers. Yeah. I I mean, I didn’t know how else to do it. I was thinking about that a lot as I enjoyed these and when I knew you were making them, I was like, “How’s that going?” It’s the only thing I could think of. Okay. So, now that you’ve got a little square with um a little tiny dab of filling on it, pick it up, put it on your hand, on the palm of your hand. Okay? So, if you’re holding it in your left hand, then you you’re going to touch the two opposite corners with water. Just a little bit of water. And then kind of fold them up together and pinch them in the middle. Okay? And then take the other two and pinch them to the middle. So you’re kind of making like a little I think of it like a little purse almost, you know, like a drawstring purse. Looks like it’s kind of all gathered at the top. It’s kind of like that. And you kind of just have to pinch it and then set it down. And what I did was I had a a plate to the side that had flour on it. Put flour on your hand. to put flour on the thing because they they do get kind of sticky, especially when you add water to stick them. Now they’re getting sticky. Your hand is going to be sticky. I had to keep stopping and washing my hands because it would be kind of goopy where I was trying to hold them. Uh I don’t know if there’s a dumpling in the world you could make that isn’t a little bit messy. I was going to say you always just kind of end up head to toe. You move your hair out of your face and then you’ve got flour on your cheek. And yeah, it’s always a little bit of a full body experience when you’re making the dumplings, isn’t it? And when it’s small like this because it’s so f fiddly. Yeah. You’re kind of You don’t want to have everything stuck. No. No. I can imagine. So I had my son who was hanging around in the kitchen. I asked him to count just count how long it was taking me once I kind of got going. And it was about 12 seconds to close up one dumpling. I don’t know if that’s speedy or not because when you think about it, like I counted and now I can’t remember. I think there were probably about 50 total dump little teeny tiny dumplings. Yay. Maybe 40 to 50. And so if you’re doing 12 seconds to close up each one, that’s not counting the cutting doling out the little tiny bits of meat. That’s only like six a minute. Yeah, it’s not very fast, I don’t think. Ooy, it’s a bit of work for sure. But that’s okay. We know we’re getting into that. If you say, “I’m going to make dumplings,” you have committed to some tedium and some time. Yeah. And this is a kind of these are dumplings that you eat a plate. You eat like a little bowl of them. You don’t eat three on the side of Oh, God. I hope not. Cuz they’re so tiny. So you can’t make a small little number of them. No, you make a big number of them. So you’re going to be there a little while. So just get comfy covered in flour. Pop on your favorite podcast. Exactly. Put us in your ears while you are making dumplings. You could learn to make something else. Totally confuse yourself. Or just listen to us babble when we do our drink series because that’s always fun, too. Yeah. No kidding. That’s always amusing. Okay. and have a drink while you’re making dumplings. Why not? Exactly. Okay. Okay. So, to cook these little Yeah. lovely dumplings, you’re going to boil water, add a little pinch of salt, not as much salt as you would for pasta. Okay. Don’t make it salty as the sea. No. Yeah. Into that water, you’re also going to put in two garlic cloves. Just toss them in there. Oh, okay. That’s fun. Yeah. I know, right? Um, and then you’re put your monty in. And after about three to three and a half minutes, you kind of check them to see if they are done. You can taste it. The meat cooks really fast, so you can taste it. You just don’t want them doughy. That’s what you’re going for. Your meat is raw when it goes in. Yeah. Yeah. And when you when you pinch it together, you don’t want it completely You’re not aiming for it to be completely sealed. It’s okay that you know where there’ll be kind of like little corners corners. Yeah. Don’t come fully together. That helps steam the meat. Okay. And also apparently she said the onion the reason she grates it instead of chops it to put it in the filling is because it brings out the juice which also helps to cook the meat because the juice kind of steams the meat inside the dumpling. Okay. Yes. It’s raw when you don’t cook that meat first. Okay. Okay. Okay. I’m on board now. I promise I have shown up. Okay. So, after they’re done, now you’re going to have to do them in batches if you’re cooking them all at once. I did not cook all at once. I did kind of like one pot pot. Mhm. And then I saved some of them. But if you’re doing like a big pot, you might have to do it in batches cuz you don’t want them to stick together. I don’t know. Kind of feel it out depending on the size of your pot. Okay. What I did was I took them out with my big like basket scoop thing. I just scooped them out and put them onto a like into a casserole dish. Like I just took them out of the water so they’d stop cooking. And then take a glass, it says a glass of water from the pot. So I would say about half a cup of water, okay, from your so your hot water out of it and you add it to some yogurt. This is the garlic yogurt sauce you’re going to put onto your dumplings. So, it’s about 8 tablespoon of plain yogurt. And then that bit of cooking water to thin it to more like a sauce. So, don’t just dump all the water in at once. You’re going to kind of add a little bit, stir it. It’s going to depend on the thickness of your yogurt and how runny you would like it to be, right? I aimed for spoonable. Oh, okay. Okay. Instead of a clump, I wanted it to kind of like it’s a sauce. A drizzle. Yeah. More like a drizzle. Then you’re going to fish those two garlic cloves that you put in your boiling water. You’re going to fish them out. Put them on your on your cutting board and just flatten them with your knife. Mhm. And so that they’re kind of mashed now. And add that to your garlic, I mean to your yogurt as well. Okay. And a little bit of salt and pepper. And that’s your sauce. M. And then the last thing that you’re going to put onto your lovely Monty dumplings is is the butter sauce. So remember we talked about you could do butter or you could do oil. Um you’re going to add like pepper or chili into it. Something a little bit with a little bit of a kick. So I followed again rafika’s which is a tablespoon of butter. Two pinches of red pepper flakes. Melt the butter over the heat but you don’t want to brown it. So the way she was doing it was above her element. She was sort of shaking the pot so that the heat is not directly on the butter cuz you don’t want to brown it. You just want to you want to melt it and you want to season it a little bit. And then you’re going to serve your dumplings with the yogurt sauce with butter over top and then a little bit of dried mint sprinkled on there, which I had some mint on my deck and I had thrown it in my dehydrator earlier on when I was doing something else. And so I had that and sumac if you have it and if you like it. And that’s that. That’s dumplings. It took way longer to make them than it did to talk about making them. Well, isn’t that dumplings for you? Yes. And of course, eating them was extremely easy. Eating them, as always, is the best part. Oh my gosh. Can I just express how much I love that somebody’s cooking for me again? I know. Now that we’ve started this up, oh my gosh, I’m like, I love food days. This is just the greatest. So good. I like that they’re teeny tiny. Yeah, my we got them and they looked wasn’t sure what they were and so the kids were like, “Oh, I don’t know what that is.” Right. And I was like, “They’re little mini dumplings.” And then they were like all over it. Yeah. So I forked them a couple and then I was like, “Okay, back off. The rest of you’re getting I love that little yogurt sauce.” Love it. I’m gonna make that just to put on any dumpling because I think it was just delicious. A yogurt sauce. Yeah. Who? Garlic is key. The garlic is key. The mint I wouldn’t have guessed. I thought there was something greenish. Didn’t really know. Was like, oh, maybe that’s parsley. I don’t know. Maybe I ate them too fast. I actually thought fresh mint might have had a bit more flavor. And I really love that Turkish food tends to have that mint in it. I I think it’s so good. Yeah. Yeah, it does. So, it’s such an interesting ingredient when it comes to putting it in something savory. It’s not something I would expect to put in savory. This is fantastic. These are What do you think? Worth the work. Oh, I think they were It’s kind of like when you make milky and they they take some time, but they’re so good. Like that homemade little dumpling is just like So, the ones that you didn’t cook right away and you saved, did you freeze them? I didn’t because we Well, I wasn’t sure when we were going to eat them. I should have though. Okay. I think if you freeze them, like you freeze lots of things where you have them not touching each other, freeze them and then pop them in um a container or whatever for the freezer, then you can just grab like however many you want and cook them up and eat them real quick for lunch or whatever, right? In your opinion, would you go directly from the freezer into the boiling water or would you want them to thaw a bit? No, I think you cook them from frozen. In fact, I’m pretty sure she mentioned that in her video. Okay, great. Yeah, there is this. Think of it like torrellini. That’s kind of like what it’s like, right? Right. It’s a different shape, different fold. Torrellini can be bit bigger sometimes, but um Okay. Okay. So, if you think of it like that, if you want if you don’t want to have the yogurt sauce, if you actually have a marinara and you want to throw it on, I mean, it would still be good, but you should call it yogurt sauce. But yeah, I And hey, if you want to put this yogurt, garlic sauce, and like spicy butter on your torillini, I would also do that. Now I have all the Italians and the Turkish people. Everybody’s upset with you equally now. We pissed everyone off. Whatever. Welcome. Apparently, that’s what happens. That’s why you just got to call everything fusion if you’re going to start mixing stuff up. Oh, I thought this was great. I would like to make these. Now, the idea of working with the raw meat seems much easier than working with cooked meat cuz for some reason I thought the filling was cooked. And when we went through this and realized, oh no, we’re working with raw. That seems easier to portion out into your little pinches than than cooked meat. So Oh, for sure. Cooked becomes more crumbly and then it would just roll around and would be weird. Yeah. Yeah. No, raw meat makes so much more sense. Thank you for showing up, brain. Love it. Well, I’m glad I could clear that up and I will try to put in a little video so that you can see. If there’s no video or if you’re listening, go to the social media because we always do a little promo reel for each episode that has at least little snippets of what we cooked so you can kind of see how to fold some of that process. Yes. And you’ll see it’s raw. These these are really good. Thank you for taking on this task of itty bitty dumplings. Just like happiness in your bowl. So good. So good. And now for the fine print. For links to recipes and many other random things we talked about in this episode, check out the show notes or our website www.threkitchensspodcast.com. Join us over on Instagram, Facebook, Threads, YouTube, and Tik Tok to see what we’re cooking up next. And if you love the show, tell a friend. Word of mouth is the number one way people learn about new podcasts. Thank you so much for listening.
Dining and Cooking