Fancy dumplings without heading out to a restaurant? We look at how to make the best choices for the stay-at-home version of this tasty Asian dish.
What’s available
As well as traditional pork, chicken and prawn fillings, we found several vegetarian and vegan choices. There are also some more unique fillings, such as lamb and chickpea, or chicken and kimchi.
Sodium
Dumplings on their own are moderately high in sodium. Latest recommendations are that we have no more than 2000mg sodium daily to reduce the risk of developing high blood pressure. The products we found ranged from 206mg-505mg sodium per 100g for those without dipping sauce.
Some dumplings come with sauce but most we saw were high in sodium, so we’d recommend leaving it to the side and preparing a lower-sodium sauce. Serving your dumplings with 1 tablespoon reduced-salt soy sauce adds 530mg sodium to your meal. Serving with regular soy sauce adds 1055mg sodium.
We recommend choosing dumplings that contain 500mg or less sodium per 100g.
Protein
Dumplings can be quite low in protein compared with fish, chicken or egg meals. The protein in dumplings comes from the filling, so the amount of protein on the nutrition label can give you an idea of how plump your dumplings will be. Dumplings with meat and fish contain more protein than pure vegetable fillings. The dumplings we found contained between 4.7g and 11g protein per 100g.
We recommend choosing meat or fish dumplings that contain 6g or more protein per 100g.
Low-sodium sauce dipping ideas
- 1 teaspoon reduced-salt soy sauce + 1 teaspoon peanut oil
- 1 tablespoon sweet chilli sauce
- 1 tablespoon puréed kimchi + 1 teaspoon olive oil
What counts as one serve?
Our tasters found out you can fill up on dumplings fairly quickly. Make a meal of your dumplings, and make them go further, by serving them with a plate of fresh, steamed greens. We recommend 120g, or about six dumplings, as a good serving size.
How to choose
Use these criteria to compare frozen dumplings.
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