Image: Sean Misa
Frozen dumplings sit on the God tier of quick dinners. Depending on the flavor, they form a complete meal—protein, carb, and veg—on their own, and most go from freezer to plate in less time than it would take to so much as choose a restaurant from which to order in. But there’s something better than the shiny packages from supermarket shelves.
Buying frozen dumplings from a local restaurant delivers on the cliché promise of a restaurant taste at home. Many dumpling specialists—the places pleating skins at a table in the corner or from a clear-walled booth at the entrance—freeze their dumplings before cooking to order anyway, and will happily sell bags of them to customers. We steamed up versions from a dozen different spots in and around Seattle to find a quartet that we’d keep on hand at all times.
Best Classic Jiaozi
Dumpling Generation | Edmonds and Lake Forest Park
The workhorse of the dumpling world and a culinary staple, jiaozi is Dumpling Generation’s specialty. Their golf balls of meaty filling, tightly wrapped in a chewy dough pinched thin at the edge, hold together through the steaming process without feeling heavy. The honed operation offers a variety of mostly traditional flavors (the pork with sauerkraut imparts a pleasant zing) and has clear cooking instructions on the website.
$45–52 for 40 dumplings
Image: Sean Misa
Best Soup Dumplings
Mama Dough | Kent
As depicted on Mama Dough’s logo, a woman in a bonnet-like hat makes dumplings by hand at the front of the Great Wall Mall restaurant. Her frozen handiwork comes in a wide variety of dumpling and bun styles, including the impressive crab meat xiao long bao—a delicate soup dumpling rendered rich and silky by shellfish gilding the lily. Even when some of the dumplings lost their soup, the flavor of the filling and tenderness of the wrapper made this everyone’s top choice.
$22 for 20 dumplings
Best for a Light Meal
Setolicious | Delivery
Mother-daughter team Catherine and Niki Gerlach began commercially making frozen wontons during pandemic lockdowns and packaged them into easily prepared soup kits. Unlike many mini businesses of the era that petered out or evolved, they stuck with the original plan, and still deliver the comforting packages around the greater Seattle area. Why mess with a good thing? Each bag (minimum two per order) includes 12 dumplings, broth concentrate, white pepper, spicy sauce, and instructions for preparation—which takes less than ten minutes.
$35 for 24 dumplings and two soup kits, delivery included within range
Best Value
Little Garden | Bellevue
The Hunan specialties hiding behind the façade of an average strip mall Chinese restaurant are well worth the long wait for smoked duck or cured pork stir-fried with leeks. But there’s just one way to get Little Garden’s food fast: Keep a bag of their half-moon shaped dumplings on hand at home. Though smaller in size than most of the dumplings tasted, the flavor goes big, packed with aromatic chives, and the thinner skin works nicely either boiled or steamed.
$10 for 50 dumplings
Published in the The Innovation Issue issue of Seattle Met.
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