In Israel, bourekas are the quick breakfast or lunch of choice. These savory pastries made their way to the Middle East by way of the Balkans and can be filled with all sorts of cheeses and veggies. Janna Gur, author of The Book of New Israeli Food, includes several boureka recipes representing many of the filling combinations and doughs that make this pastry so popular.

These cheese bourekas are ideal for boureka novices who aren’t yet ready to start making their own puffy pastry dough. Using the store-bought stuff, these bourekas are stuffed with a wonderfully salty mix of Israeli cheese including gvina levana, kashkaval, and brinza. These exotic cheeses aren’t the easiest to find so ricotta, parmesan, and feta can also be subbed in. The cheese is bound with a couple of egg yolks and a bit of cornstarch, pinched into triangles of puff pastry and sprinkled with sesame seeds before being baked.

I’ve found that using 20% whole wheat flour strikes the perfect balance, making the dough much more flavorful and nutty than one made with just all-purpose flour, while also not compromising its structure.
How do you get that pocket? Here are my rules.

Rule 1: Knead the Dough Well
Pita is a yeasted bread, which means it has to go through several stages: mixing, proofing, shaping, final proofing, and baking. To make pitas, start by simply mixing all of the ingredients together.

As with all yeasted breads, make sure that your liquid (in this case, water) is at the right temperature for the yeast to wake up and start doing its job of fermenting the dough and producing carbon dioxide. Go with a temperature of around 105°F (41°C), and don’t let it get higher than 120°F (49°C), or the yeast will start to die, and that’s just cruel.

Mix until it forms what we bakers call a “shaggy mass.” At this point, almost all of the flour is incorporated, and the mixture has almost become a dough, but is still rather ragged.

Chewy, flavorful, steam-puffed homemade pita bread (with a real pocket!) can be yours in just two hours.
Staring through the oven door as pita bread bakes is the best part of making it at home. When I teach my baking class, the culinary students are always amazed as the pita breads blow up like balloons, seemingly about to pop. If they’re not made right, though, the pitas won’t puff and get that big pocket in the middle—a key element of a successful pita.

Baking pitas at home is absolutely worth the effort. Freshly made ones are in a completely different league from the ones bought at the store in plastic bags. They’re chewier and more delicate, and they have a delicious, yeasty aroma that wafts out when you open up the pocket. It’s also not a major time commitment: Pitas can be baked and sandwich-stuffed in less than two hours.

A perfectly puffed pita is a beautiful thing.
The Pocket
So why does pita bread have a pocket, anyway? It’s all about structure, moisture, and heat. When a thin disk of pita dough is placed on a hot surface in the oven, two things start to happen. First, the intense heat starts to dry and set the dough on the top and bottom. At the same time, it begins to turn moisture in the center of the pita to a blast of steam.

For the Cheese Filling:
1 pound, 2 ounces gvina levana (fresh white cheese) or ricotta (5% fat)
9 ounces kashkaval or Parmesan cheese, grated
9 ounces brinza or feta cheese, crumbled
2 egg yolks
1 tablespoon corn starch
Freshly ground black pepper
For the Pastry:
3 pounds, 5 ounces puff pastry dough
1 egg, beaten with 1 tablespoon water, for brushing
Sesame seeds for garnishing

Directions
Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C).

Beat all ingredients for filling until smooth.

Roll dough into a 1/4-inch-thick sheet. Cut into 5-inch squares. Put 1 tablespoon of filling in center of each square, fold diagonally to form a triangle and pinch edges together. Arrange bourekas with sufficient space between them on a tray lined with baking paper.

Brush triangles with beaten egg and sprinkle sesame seeds on top.

Bake for about 30 minutes until bourekas are golden and plump and smell delicious.

When enough steam is generated, it builds pressure, pushing the pita out from the center and inflating it. Because the exterior has already started to set, though, it’s strong enough to resist rupturing, keeping that steam bubble trapped within.

I also like to use some whole wheat flour in my dough for flavor. Whole wheat can be tricky, though, because it doesn’t generate gluten as well as all-purpose or bread flour—and we need that gluten to make the dough elastic enough to expand around that central air pocket.

But there are caveats: Freshwater fish and some anadromous fish—fish, like salmon, that divide their life cycles between fresh and salt water—are susceptible to broad fish tapeworms, which are widely considered more harmful than other parasitic worms. Few experts recommend eating fish in the cod family—particularly Atlantic cod, but also Pacific cod, haddock, and pollack—since they’re highly susceptible to infection by a range of parasites. (According to Haraguchi, there’s another reason fish in the cod family are not eaten raw: “There’s so much moisture [in the flesh], it doesn’t taste good.”)

The parasites that infect most marine fish are nematodes, or roundworms, from the genus Anisakis. It’s preferable to avoid eating them, of course, but conventional wisdom says that the stray live anisakid in your gut will, at worst, provoke some discomfort—nausea and possible stomach pain, similar in kind to a bout of food poisoning.

Temperature Abuse and Bacterial Contamination: The Real Danger

Haraguchi and Herron agree that parasites in raw fish are less of a concern than bacterial contamination. “At the end of the day, we can freeze this product—so we’ve gotten rid of the worms—but you could temp-abuse it at home, we could temp-abuse it here, there’s a million different things that can impact the bacterial count on that fish,” Herron says.

Sakanari notes that preparations like ceviche, in which fish are submerged in an acidic bath, do nothing to kill off anisakids, since they thrive in highly acidic environments. Candling—in which a strong light is shined through thin fish fillets placed on a glass, in order to spot parasites to be removed—is also not foolproof: Sakanari describes an experiment in which she and her colleagues examined a piece of rockfish using this method and determined that it was free of parasites. After cooking, they then flaked the fish fillet and examined it, and found that they had in fact missed several worms. Even experts can fail to completely deworm a fillet.

The upshot of all this: The only real way to be sure that you’ve eliminated any parasites in the flesh is by using temperature. “It’s best to properly freeze or cook the fish. That’s the bottom line,” Sakanari says. Is it worth the risk to eat raw fish that hasn’t been properly frozen? “It depends on how much you love the dish,” she says. “There are always risks to eating anything raw and improperly prepared or washed, so it is incumbent upon consumers to be aware of the risks and how to prevent the infections.”

That impulse to find a more hospitable environment, Sakanari says, is what makes anisakids particularly worrisome for humans. The human body is sufficiently different from that of whales and elephant seals—typical anisakid end hosts—that it forces the worms to wander around inside of it. As they do so, they probe along the intestinal wall, trying to penetrate it and sometimes getting stuck in the process, which can necessitate resection. (Interestingly, because humans are a natural end host for tapeworms, Sakanari says that tapeworm infection, as disgusting as it might sound, would be preferable to larval anisakid infection. The pathologies associated with the adult fish tapeworm infection are by and large less severe, and can be treated with a simple anthelmintic.)

The upshot of all this: The only real way to be sure that you’ve eliminated any parasites in the flesh is by using temperature. “It’s best to properly freeze or cook the fish. That’s the bottom line,” Sakanari says. Is it worth the risk to eat raw fish that hasn’t been properly frozen? “It depends on how much you love the dish,” she says. “There are always risks to eating anything raw and improperly prepared or washed, so it is incumbent upon consumers to be aware of the risks and how to prevent the infections.”

Both Haraguchi and Herron point out that, in certain cultures, fish has long been served raw despite never having been frozen at all, and neither was bothered by the idea of eating fish under those circumstances (though they stress that the fish they sell for raw consumption has been frozen according to FDA guidelines). Of parasites, Haraguchi says, “It’s natural. Parasites are as natural as seeing a ladybug in farmers market vegetables.” When I tell Herron that I myself have purchased fluke at The Lobster Place, butchered it, and eaten it raw at home, he says, “I’ve done the same thing. I’m fine, you’re fine. And everybody was doing that before these regulations came out, and everyone was okay.”

Dr. Judy Sakanari, a parasitologist in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of California, San Francisco, believes that this view downplays the risks of ingesting anisakids. “Infection by these parasites can be very serious and can lead to resection [surgical removal of part of an organ] of the intestine,” she warns. Sakanari stresses that understanding the life cycle of the parasite is necessary to a full appreciation of the risks involved.

All parasites seek to reach their end-host organisms. For tapeworms, these are bears and other fish-eating mammals; for anisakids, they’re marine mammals, such as whales, seals, and dolphins. If all goes as the parasite gods intend, fish carrying infectious worm larvae will be consumed by an end-host organism. But if those fish are snatched up in a trawler or caught on a line, the ideal parasitic life cycle is interrupted. As soon as the fish’s body temperature begins to rise to that of the end-host mammal, the parasite larvae in its gut will attempt to find a way out, leading them to burrow into the fish’s flesh. This is one reason why it’s always best to keep ungutted fish cold: Any parasite larvae in the fish gut will remain immobile as long as the temperature is sufficiently low.

This FDA table details the species-specific risks of live parasites in fish. But the information here is a little misleading, and meant to serve more as an agency warning about the perils of mislabeling fish than as a practical guide to which fish must be frozen prior to raw consumption. Exempted from the FDA’s freezing requirements are, as Herron mentions, large species of tuna—deemed safe based on the frequency with which they are eaten in raw form and the infrequency of related, documented parasitic infection—as well as aquacultured fish, like salmon, given verification that the feed it’s raised on is parasite-free. To meet FDA guidelines, every other type of fish must be frozen to those temperatures, even if the table does not indicate that it carries a parasite risk, because it “may have a parasite hazard that has not been identified if these fish are not customarily consumed raw or undercooked.”

It’s a paradox: The FDA will not deem a fish free from parasite hazards, and thus safe to eat raw without freezing, unless that fish is eaten raw, without being frozen, frequently enough to present sufficient evidence of its safety. To Luke Davin, the general manager of Osakana, this standard means that “deviating from [the FDA’s] ‘freeze it all’ approach puts the burden of testing and proof on the processor.” He says that most, if not all, fish markets lack the resources to exhaustively test the fish they receive for parasite hazards. The easiest solution, then, is simply to freeze everything.

How Dangerous Are Parasites? Depends Who You Ask
Despite the FDA’s blanket recommendations for the elimination of parasites, which is the main goal of its freezing guidelines, very few infections from eating raw fish have been documented in American medical literature. In the US, eating raw fish that hasn’t been frozen is rare enough that the agency’s “Bad Bug Book” uses Japan as a reference point, since the practice is far more prevalent there. But even in Japan, where freezing of fish meant for sashimi is not required, reported infection rates are vanishingly small compared to the total population. (For instance, the Bad Bug Book reports “more than 1,000 cases” of infection by anisakis worms, the most common parasite in marine fish, reported annually in Japan, but keep in mind that’s out of a total population of ~127 million in 2015.)

Because some infections are asymptomatic, and many are thought to go unreported, the risk of infection may be greater than statistics suggest. On a less scientific level, worms—particularly parasitic worms—inhabit dark recesses of our collective imagination. The idea that eating a piece of seemingly pristine, delicious fish carries a risk of infestation by alien-like organisms is enough to give anyone—including health authorities equipped with all the relevant, fear-assuaging data—the heebie jeebies.

What the FDA Guidelines Mean (and Why Tuna and Farmed Salmon Are So Common)
Regulations regarding fish sold for raw consumption vary from state to state, although every state points to FDA guidelines as the gold standard; the key difference between the states is whether those guidelines are enforced. Haraguchi and Herron note that both the New York City Department of Health (which regulates restaurants in NYC) and the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets (which regulates fish markets throughout the state) have adopted the FDA guidelines as law. While those recommendations are primarily focused on limiting pathogenic bacterial growth (more on that below), they do include rigorous specifications for killing parasites.

Herron describes those specifications this way: “Any wild fish except tuna species—bigeye, yellowfin, bluefin, bonito/skipjack—those wild fish need to be frozen for specific periods of time at specific temperatures to get rid of parasites.” The exact temperatures and times can be found on the FDA website, but suffice it to say that those temperatures, reaching as low as -31°F, are well below what a home freezer can reliably produce and maintain, which is why it isn’t advisable to try this at home. Sushi restaurants and fish markets use what’s called a “super freezer,” which is exactly what it sounds like: a freezer that maintains super-cold temperatures. (Osakana’s super freezer, for example, maintains a temperature of -60°F.)

I spoke to several experts to help demystify what “sushi-” and “sashimi-grade” mean, and to outline best practices for preparing fish at home for raw consumption.* If you’d like to just skip ahead to the tips, click here. For a more involved description of the risks inherent in eating raw fish, including the possibility of parasite infection and bacterial contamination, read on.

Note: The information in this guide applies to finfish and flatfish only. Raw shellfish, including crustaceans (like shrimp and lobster) and mollusks (oysters and clams), are subject to their own set of considerations, which unfortunately lie beyond the scope of this article.

If you know what to look for in fresh, whole marine fish (freshwater fish are susceptible to tapeworms and probably best avoided), as well as how to fillet them, then your decision to eat raw fish other than tuna and farmed salmon at home comes down to your individual comfort level with risk. To be 100% sure of avoiding parasites, you’ll have to stick to tuna and farmed salmon. But if you are willing to accept a small risk of infection—a risk that’s also present in any fish that hasn’t been grievously overcooked—then all you have to do is keep your fish cold and your preparation area and tools clean, and you’re good to go.

Officially, the terms “sashimi-grade” and “sushi-grade” mean precisely nothing. Yuji Haraguchi, owner of the Brooklyn-based Osakana, a fish shop specializing in sashimi, recalls using them for marketing purposes when he worked as a sales representative for wholesale fish distributor True World Foods. Back in 2004, the company was trying to expand its customer base beyond Japanese restaurants, and Haraguchi’s mission was to convince other restaurants to serve their customers raw fish besides tuna. “The term ‘sushi-grade fish’ was very effective in terms of making sales, but at the same time, I had to provide the right product and the right information,” he says. Davis Herron, director of the retail and restaurant division at The Lobster Place fish market in Manhattan’s Chelsea Market, agrees: “It’s a marketing term that has little significance [with respect] to actually being able to consume raw fish.”

The appropriation of sushi and sashimi for this purpose makes sense, since many Americans eat raw fish primarily in Japanese restaurants. It’s the “grade” portion that is entirely misleading. There is no national governing body that grades fish in the same way that the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) grades beef. Although the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issues advisory guidelines that sketch out processes for handling a variety of fish meant for raw consumption, those guidelines are not intended to determine the quality of the fish in the way marbling determines the quality of beef—only its relative safety for eating raw. So when you see a piece of fish labeled sushi- or sashimi-grade, that means that the seller has judged it safe to eat raw. The claim is only as trustworthy as the fish market that makes it.

Few foods can rival a sliver of raw fish, impeccably fresh and minimally adorned, whether it’s perched atop a mound of sushi rice or swimming in a spicy citrus bath. And yet, despite the popularity of incredibly simple dishes like sushi, sashimi, crudo, poke, and tartares on restaurant menus, for many cooks, preparing raw fish at home remains a daunting task.

In part, this stems from uncertainty about the risks of eating raw fish. Many people will gladly place their faith in an anonymous sushi chef at a random restaurant, but nevertheless shy away from the potential dangers of homemade ceviche. Cooks comfortable with chopping up raw beef for tartare may think twice about doing the same for striped bass.

And then there’s the issue of availability. Many Americans struggle to find fresh seafood, and even those with access to good fish markets are rarely sure of their ability to gauge the freshness of fish, both whole and filleted. That can drastically reduce their confidence in eating fish at all, let alone raw.

Finally, additional confusion has been borne out of some widespread and misleading terminology. Some fish markets will have a section of their display cordoned off, containing a few pristine-looking pieces of tuna and salmon labeled “sushi-” or “sashimi-grade.” A great fish market may advertise sushi- or sashimi-grade hamachi and fluke as well. But, as anyone who has eaten much sushi knows, there are plenty of other fish in the sea. In indicating that these fish are safe to eat raw, the labels also imply—erroneously—that others are not.

When my wife Adri was still my girlfriend Adri, she and I spent a number of years living in separate cities. Every other weekend I’d pack up the old Saab to take the trip down from Boston to New York for the weekend. My one task every time I visited? Deliver frozen dumplings.

It’s not that you couldn’t find frozen dumplings in New York, but we had a particular addiction the the ones sold in bags of 50 from Qingdao Garden up on Mass Ave between Cambridge and Arlington. If we were lucky, each bag would last the two weeks between deliveries. My wife has a thing for dumplings and to this day we still keep a stock ready-to-go in the freezer at all times.

Unlike many frozen foods, dumplings survive the trip from freezer to belly remarkably well—they are nearly indistinguishable from fresh-made so long as they’re kept free of freezer burn. Whether you’re stocking your freezer with homemade Chinese dumplings or Japanese dumplings, or using a store-bought brand, you have a hot, tasty snack only a few minutes away.

The Easiest: Steam or Boil
Boiling frozen dumplings is the easiest method, though it’s also the most time consuming as you have to wait for a pot of water to come to a boil.

Boiling frozen dumplings.
To boil dumplings, fill a large pot two-thirds of the way with water. Cover and bring to a boil over high heat. Add as many dumplings as can fit comfortably in a single layer in the pot and cook them until they float. Let them cook an additional two to three minutes. Fish them out with a strainer, drain them, and serve.

Steaming is a much faster method as you only need to bring a few cups of water to a boil instead of an entire pot. Texturally, it’ll also leave the skins a little stretchier and firmer. I generally prefer this texture to the softer texture boiling gives. It does require the use of a bamboo steamer insert for your wok or pot. It’s a worthwhile investment if you do any amount of Asian cooking, and they also make great stacking storage devices for potatoes and alliums.

Sheet tray of fresh, uncooked dumplings.
To freeze, place fresh dumplings on a rimmed baking sheet lined with parchment paper or on a large plate dusted with a little flour or cornstarch. Place the entire tray of dumplings into the freezer uncovered and let them rest until fully frozen, about half an hour, then transfer the frozen dumplings to a zipper-lock freezer bag and squeeze out as much air as possible, seal the bag, and store the dumplings for up to two months.

Freezer burn is caused when ice crystals sublimate—that is, they transform directly from ice into water vapor, skipping the water phase entirely. Sublimation can be controlled by limiting the amount of airflow around the dumplings. As standard zipper-lock bags are actually breathable (air can pass very slowly through the plastic), they aren’t great for long term freezer storage. It’s important that you use a zipper-lock freezer bag, which is made of thicker plastic and designed to prevent freezer burn. Alternatively, use a standard zipper-lock bag followed by a tight wrap in two layers of aluminum foil. This will effectively block air flow to the dumplings.

Here are my favorite ways to cook frozen dumplings. All of them start with dumplings straight from the freezer.

How to Freeze Fresh Dumplings
First things first: you need frozen dumplings in order to cook them, right? And while you can buy them from a store (stay tuned for our taste test recommendations), you’ll get much better results making them yourself or buying un-cooked fresh or frozen dumplings from a local restaurant (If you have a shop you particularly like, ask, they’ll probably sell you uncooked dumplings!).

The trick is freezing them individually and storing them in a way that prevents freezer burn.

Drain and Dry
Draining water from a bowl of dumplings.
Dumplings on white plate.
Drain the dumplings, set them on the plate, and count to 15. This time will allow a bit of their surface moisture to evaporate so that you don’t add too much water to the hot skillet causing it to splatter.

Fry the Dumplings
Adding microwave-cooked dumplings to pan.
Crisping dumplings in pan.
Dump the dumplings in the skillet, arrange so they’re right-side-up, and cook, shaking and swirling the pan constantly until the dumplings are an even golden brown underneath. This will take less than a minute. If you want them even crispier, feel free to crisp them up on multiple surfaces.

Serve
Dumplings and dipping sauce on serving plate.
Transfer back to the plate and serve with dipping sauce. Freezer to belly in under five minutes!

Frozen dumplings will stick to the bamboo inside a steamer, so you need to line it first. If you’ve got some Napa cabbage in the fridge, the leaves make great steamer liners. Alternatively, you can use parchment paper to make a breathable non-stick surface. Once you get the hang of it, you can make one in about the time it takes to bring the water in the wok to steaming-level. Here’s how.

Cutting parchment paper to add to steamer basket.
Fold in Half
Folding parchment paper in half.
Fold a sheet of parchment paper with a length and width of at least the diameter of your steamer in half.

Fold in Half Again
Folding parchment paper in quarters.
Fold it in half the other direction, creating a rectangle.

Fold Into a Triangle
Folding parchment into a triangle
Fold the rectangle into a triangle, making sure that the tip of the new fold lies at the main vertex of the original rectangle (the spot that used to be the center of the full sheet).

Add Dumplings and Steam
Placing frozen dumplings in steamer basket.
Putting lid on steamer basket.
Add your dumplings, then set the steamer on top of a wok or a saucepan that just fits underneath it filled with about one inch of water. Cover the steamer and bring the water to a hard boil. Steam the dumplings until cooked through, about 10 minutes if going directly from the freezer.

Want Crispy Dumplings? Use the Classic Steam-Fry
The steam-fry or potsticker technique is the classic method for Japanese gyoza or Chinese guo tie. Essentially, you fry the frozen dumplings, then add water to the pan and cover them to steam through, then fry them again once the water evaporates. This double-frying creates an extra-crisp bottom crust.

The instructions on the back of a bag of frozen dumplings often skip the initial fry in the way of convenience, but it’s worth taking the time if you’re going to use this method.

Trim the Center
Cutting the tip off a parchment paper triangle.
Snip off the very tip of the triangle.

Make Vents
Cutting ridges into a triangle of parchment paper.
Make a series of very small triangular cuts along the edges of the large triangle. This will create vent holes when you unfold the parchment in order to allow steam to circulate around the dumplings.

Unfold and Insert
Placing parchment paper round in steamer basket.
Unfold the parchment and insert it into the bamboo steamer. It should fit perfectly.

Continue Folding in Half
Folding sheet of parchment into a triangle.
Fold the triangle in half twice more to create a very long and skinny triangle.

Trim the Back End
Cutting parchment paper to fit in a steamer basket.
Place the triangle over your steamer with the tip aligned above the center of the steamer. Trim the far end until the triangle fits neatly inside the steamer.

Cover and Cook
Water simmering in pan with dumplings.
Steam until cooked through.
Cover with a lid and steam until the dumplings are cooked through. Frozen dumplings should take between six to 10 minutes depending on their size (just cut one in half and peek to make sure it’s cooked).

Remove Lid and Evaporate
Water cooks off in a pan of dumplings.
Remove lid and cook, swirling, until crisp again.
Remove the lid and cook, swirling the pan regularly, until the remaining water has evaporated and the dumplings are crisp again. Some recipes suggest leaving the dumplings alone without swirling here. I find that swirling gives them a much better, more evenly browned and crisped crust.

Add Dumplings and Water to a Microwave-Safe Bowl
Pouring water into a bowl of frozen dumplings.
Place your frozen dumplings in a microwave-safe bowl and add water until they’re about half covered.

Cover and Microwave
Covering a bowl of frozen dumplings before microwaving.
Place a microwave-safe plate on top to cover the bowl, then microwave on high power until the dumplings are cooked through, about three minutes.

Preheat a Skillet
Adding oil to nonstick pan.
Meanwhile, starting pre-heating a couple tablespoons of oil in a non-stick or cast iron skillet over medium heat.

Turning a crisp-bottomed dumpling in pan.
Extra-crisp bottoms.
The Absolute Fastest: Microwave and Fry
I spent several years as a line cook in a fancy restaurant located in a hotel. Hotel restaurants have one particular issue that makes them even more stressful to work at than a standard restaurant: room service. You can be in the middle of the deepest weeds you’ve ever had to work your way out of when an order for a room service cheeseburger or steak comes in. It was always my priority to get those room service orders out of the way as fast as humanly possible without compromising quality.

One of the most popular items on the room service menu? Crispy fried dumplings, which we stored in bulk in the deep freezer, thawing and cooking them to order. You can bet your butt that I figured out the fastest way to do it. Steam-frying in a non-stick skillet is fast, but not fast enough. I needed to do it in five minutes or less.

This is the best method to use if you need a crispy, tender, juicy, fatty fix RIGHT NOW.

Pan-Fry
The bottom of a crisp fried dumpling.
Fry until crisp.
Heat a couple tablespoons of oil in the bottom of a non-stick or cast iron skillet over moderate heat until shimmering. Add the dumplings in a single layer and cook, swirling the pan, until an even deep golden brown on the bottom, one to two minutes. Swirling is important—it creates a more even crust.

Add Water and Steam
Adding water to a pan of frying dumplings.
Add water.
Increase heat to medium high and add water until it covers the dumplings by a third to a half.

Cover and Cook
Water simmering in pan with dumplings.
Steam until cooked through.
Cover with a lid and steam until the dumplings are cooked through. Frozen dumplings should take between six to 10 minutes depending on their size (just cut one in half and peek to make sure it’s cooked).

Remove Lid and Evaporate
Water cooks off in a pan of dumplings.
Remove lid and cook, swirling, until crisp again.
Remove the lid and cook, swirling the pan regularly, until the remaining water has evaporated and the dumplings are crisp again. Some recipes suggest leaving the dumplings alone without swirling here. I find that swirling gives them a much better, more evenly browned and crisped crust.