Buckwheat Dumplings – Gluten and Dairy Free

Buckwheat pasta dough, used to make chicken dumplings, is easy to prepare, flexible to work with, and it has nutritional advantages compared to gluten free pasta/ravioli/dumplings dough. It contains only unprocessed dry ingredients, that excludes starches, gums and other thickeners that are present in any commercial gluten free flour mixes. Chicken, used as a filling in this particular recipe, can be replaced by any other ingredient, both savoury and sweet. Dumplings can be cooked fresh, or can be frozen for later use. They survive freezing well and can be cooked (boiled or steamed) straight from the freezer.

To exclude any processing, it is also possible to make more rustic dough, by using home-ground buckwheat kernels and flax seeds. Though darker in colour with larger particles showing, the dough is still easy to make and work with.

Ingredients:

small portion to try

• 130g buckwheat flour
• 20g flaxseed flour (I used golden flaxseed flour)
• 1 egg (around 50g without shell)
• 50ml water, room temperature
• 1/2 tea spoon sea salt

home-ground ingredients

• 120g ground buckwheat kernels, put through the sieve twice
• 30g ground flax seeds, sifted (I used brown flax seeds)
• 1 egg (50g without shell)
• 25ml water
• sea-salt

cooked chicken filling (alternatively use chicken mince filling from here)

• meat from 3 chicken drumsticks, cooked to the stage when meat separates from the bone
• 1 large leek or 2 medium size onions
• 1-2 table spoons of olive oil (or 1 olive oil and 1 butter)
• sea salt and black pepper to taste
• good pinch of cumin powder (optional) or other spices or herbs to your taste

Preparation:

Buckwheat and flaxseed flour dough is prepared in the same way as it is shown in step by step photos for making buckwheat soba noodles (see here).

filling

• place chicken drumsticks in water with vegetables (see here)
• heat until boiling point, add seasoning and simmer for 1-1.5 hours
• let meat rest in broth until lukewarm
• separate meat from bones and skin
• blend meat to a coarse texture
• heat oil in a pan, add leek/onions sliced in semicircles, gentry fry until soft and translucent
• mix chicken meat with cooked leek/onions, add seasoning, mix to even texture

dough

• mix buckwheat and flaxseed flour, add sea salt
• put flour mix through a sieve on a chopping board
• make a well and break an egg into a centre
• mix it in with dry ingredients with a knife or pastry scraper
• add water, mix it in with a scraper, until you have small size wet pieces of the dough
• collect them in a ball
• knead the dough to even texture, let it rest at room temperature for 15-20 minutes, cover the dough to prevent it drying out
• cut the piece of the dough and roll it into a thick rope around 2 cm in diameter
• cut the rope in 1-1.5 cm pieces
• flatten each piece, simultaneously coating it with flour from both sides
• roll each piece thin
• put filling in the middle and press edges together, it might be easier when they are brushed with water
• cook dumplings in salted boiling water

Dumplings are best served with sour cream and horseradish, separately or mixed together.

Alternative fillings for dumplings or ravioli, prepared from buckwheat dough can be found here.