Best Tibetan Beef Momo Recipes

NEPALI MOMO

Steps:

• Mix together the flour and 1 1/2 cups room temperature water in a bowl. Knead the dough well until it is medium-firm and flexible. Cover and let rest for 1 hour.
• Meanwhile, mix together the chicken, cilantro, onions, garlic, ginger, cumin, cinnamon, 2 tablespoons salt and 1/2 teaspoon pepper in a bowl.
• To make the wrappers: Break off 1/2 ounce of dough and forming it into a ball. Place the ball on a flat surface and roll it into a 4-inch round with a rolling pin. Repeat with the remaining dough.
• Spray a steamer pan with cooking spray.
• Place a tablespoon of the chicken filling in the middle of a wrapper. Holding the wrapper in your left hand. Use your right thumb and index finger to start pinching the edges of the wrapper together. Pinch and fold until the edges of the circle close up like a little satchel. Place the momo in the prepared steamer pan. Repeat with remaining wrappers and filling.
• Fill the steamer pot halfway with water and bring to a boil. Set the steamer pan with the momos on top of the pot and cover with a tight lid. Steam the momos until cooked, 8 to 9 minutes.

TSAK SHA MOMOS

Steps:

• In a bowl, combine the beef, onion, cilantro, ginger, oil, garlic, salt and 2 tablespoons of water. Using your hands or a spoon, mix lightly but well. Set aside, from 30 minutes to 2 hours, to develop the flavors.
• Lay 6 wrappers out on a work surface. Spoon about 2 teaspoons of filling onto the upper half of each wrapper. With a damp cloth, lightly moisten the edges of each wrapper and fold up and over the filling into a half-moon, gently pressing the edges to seal. To pleat the sealed edges, start at one tip of the half-moon and make small folds in the dough, pressing them flat as you work your way along the edge. There should be space for about 7 folds. Place finished dumplings on a nonstick surface and cover lightly with damp paper towels. Refrigerate if not cooking immediately.
• When ready to cook, boil water in the bottom of a large steamer. Spray the steamer tray lightly with nonstick spray and gently add the dumplings, making sure they do not touch. Steam in batches for 10 minutes, until the wrappers are slightly translucent, and serve immediately.
• To eat, spoon a dab of sauce onto a small plate. Pick up a dumpling and bite off one end; do not let the juice spill out. Carefully suck out the juice, then eat the rest in bites, dipping it into the sauce.

TIBETAN BEEF MOMOS

Steps:

• Spoon a small amount of filling into the centre of each momo wrapper and shape (keep wrappers covered to avoid them from drying out).
• Set up an ice bath next to your stove by filling a medium-sized bowl with cold water and ice. Bring a medium pot filled halfway full of water to a boil. Add two vine-ripened tomatoes and 4 chilis to water. After about 45 seconds (skins of tomatoes should just be visibly peeling) remove tomatoes from water and continue to cook chilis for an additional 60 seconds, remove chilis to ice bath. Keep the water from the pot.
• Mix all filling ingredients thoroughly in a medium-sized bowl and let sit in fridge for 30 minutes covered so flavours develop fully.
• In a medium-sized bowl, whisk flour and salt together. Create a well in the middle of the flour.
• There are plenty of ways to shape your momos, I recommend watching a few tutorials on how to shape them.
• Peel skin from tomatoes and discard. Remove stems from chilis and discard. Place tomatoes and chilis in a blender.
• Slowly pour warm water into the well, whisking flour from sides into the well with a fork until liquid is absorbed and a shaggy dough is formed.
• Keep dumplings on a large plate or sheet tray covered with plastic wrap. If not cooking immediately can store in the fridge or can place sheet tray in freezer until dumplings are frozen and then remove them into freezer bags to store.
• In a dry frying pan over medium-high heat, toast Sichuan peppercorns until fragrant (roughly 1 minute and 30 seconds). Remove from heat and grind finely with a mortar and pestle. Add ground Sichuan to blender.
• Turn out onto a clean surface and knead for 8 minutes, until dough is very smooth.
• Either steam or pan-fry dumplings depending on your preference.
• Add the rest of the ingredients for the sepen to the blender, and pulse. Pour a small amount (1-2 tablespoons) of the water you used to blanch tomatoes and pulse again. Consistency of sauce should be smooth but not too liquidy.
• Cover with plastic wrap and let rest for 30 minutes.
• Steam: Fill a pot a quarter of the way full with cold water, place bamboo steamer so it is resting on rim of pot. Bring to a boil and then turn down to a simmer. Grease slats of steamer with neutral oil and then place dumplings inside, cover and cook for 10 minutes or until cooked through.
• Pour hot sauce into a small bowl and set aside.
• Divide dough into 4 sections.
• Serve with sepen, soy sauce or whatever other chili sauce you may have on hand.
• On a floured work surface, roll out one of the sections into a large rectangle, about 1/8th of an inch thick (thin but not to the point where it will tear). Using a circle cutter or something similar that measures around 5" in diameter, cut dough into circles.
• Repeat with three remaining dough sections, dusting wrappers with flour and stacking them on top of one another, separated by parchment paper. Set aside in fridge until ready to use.
• It is not advisable but you can re-roll your scraps and cut again (I did this and wrappers turned out fine).

TIBETAN MOMO (A DIM SUM DUMPLING FROM TIBET)

Steps:

• Mix the flour with enough cold water to make a fairly stiff dough.
• Knead it well and roll small pieces into thin rounds,about 3 1/2 inches in diameter.
• Mix meat, onion, garlic, soy sauce, ginger and salt together.
• Put a teaspoon of meat mixture in each little pancake and fold over. Pinch, flute or pleat the edges together so the momo looks like a half-moon or is round shaped.
• Lightly coat a bamboo or metal steamer with vegetable spray and arrange momo so they do not touch. Cover and steam over boiling water for l0-15 minutes.
• Momo also can be cooked in broth and served as a soup or fried.
• NEPALESE meat filling.
• 1 cup buffalo meat, ground or minced.
• l large onion, minced.
• 2-3 cloves garlic.
• 2.5 cm. piece ginger.
• 1/2 teaspoon salt.
• 1/2 teaspoon chili powder.
• 1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder.
• 1 tablespoon ghee or clarified butter.
• 1/2 teaspoon cumin seed powder.
• oil or vegetable oil spray.
• 2 cups+ flour.
• SHERPA Meat Filling.
• 4 chicken breast halves,boneless, minced.
• 2 minced onions.
• 5 cloves garlic (or to taste), diced.
• 3 tbs ginger, to taste, or one large piece diced.
• 1-2 tablespoons soy sauce.
• salt, paper and accent to taste.
• 1 teaspoon garam masala (optional).

SHAMEY MOMOS (VEGETABLE MOMOS)

Steps:

• Mix the all-purpose flour and the water very well by hand and knead until you make a smooth ball of dough.
• Knead the dough very well until the dough is quite flexible (about 5 minutes).
• Leave your dough in the bowl, covered, or in a plastic bag while you prepare the rest of the ingredients. You should not let the dough dry out or it will be hard to work with.
• Chop the onion, garlic, ginger, cilantro, bok choy, green onions, and mushrooms into very, very small pieces.
• Pre-cook the tofu and mushrooms, with the goal of cooking the water out of them. To do this, heat ¼ cup of cooking oil in a pan on high. Add chopped tofu and cook on medium-high for 2 minutes, until the edges are brown. Add the chopped mushrooms and cook another 3-4 minutes on medium high.
• Cool the mushrooms and tofu then mix very well with the other filling ingredients (if the mushrooms and tofu are not cooled, the green of the other vegetables will not come out correctly).
• Place the dough on a chopping board and use a rolling pin to roll it out quite thin, about ⅛ inch thick. It should not be so thin that you can see through it when you pick it up.
• After you have rolled out the dough, you will need to cut it into little circles for each momo.
• Method 1: The easiest way to do this is to turn a small cup or glass upside-down to cut out circles about the side of the palm of your hand. We use a cup 3 and ⅓ inches in diameter. That way, you don't have to worry about making good circles of dough, because each one will be the same size and shape. If you make circles this way, you may want to thin the edges of the circle a little bit before adding the filling by pinching your way around the edge of the circle. The idea is to make the edges thinner so that when you fold the dough there won't be a giant glob of dough in the folded places.
• Method 2: Of course, you can also make the circles by the more difficult traditional way. For this, first pinch off a small ball of dough. Next, use your palm to flatten out the ball. Then, flatten out the dough into a circle with a polling pin, making the edges more thin than the middle. This method is much harder to do and takes more time, though many Tibetans still use this method. In this case, the edges are pre-thinned so there is no need to thin them anymore.
• Now that you have a small, flat, circular piece of dough, you are ready to add the filling and make the mom shapes. These are many different choices for mom shapes, but for these veggie momos we will use a very common and pretty half-moon shape. This is one of the easier shapes to make.
• For this style, you begin by holding the flat circular dough in your left hand and putting about a tablespoon of veggie filling in the middle of the dough. It can be challenging if you put too much, so at first you may want to start with a little less filling.
• Beginning anywhere on the circle, pinch the edge of the dough together. Now you will fold in a small piece of dough from the "top" edge of the circle and pinch it down against the "bottom" edge of the circle. (Where the "bottom" half of the circle is the half facing you when the mom is in your hand.) The "bottom" edge of the circle-the edge nearest you-stays relatively flat and doesn't get folded. All the folding happens only on one side of the momo. Continue folding and pitching from the starting point, moving along the edge until you reach the other tip of the half-moon. The important point is to close all the openings well so that you don't lose the juice while cooking.
• As you are making your momos, you will need to have a nonstick surface and a damp cloth or lid handy to keep the momos you've made from drying out while you're finishing the others. You can lay the momos in the lightly greased trays of your steamer and keep the lid on them, or you can lay them on wax paper and cover them with the damp cloth.
• Boil water in a large steamer. (Tibetans often use a double-decker steamer to make many momos at one time.)
• Oil the steamer surface lightly before putting the momos in, so they won't stick to the metal. (We use spray oil.)
• Place the momos a little distance apart in the steamer and they will expand a little bit when they cook. They should not be touching.
• Add the momos after the water is boiling.
• With the water boiling on high heat, steam the momos for 10-12 minutes.
• As long as the dough is cooked, they are done, as the veggie filling hardly needs to cook more.
• Serve the momos right off the stove with the dipping sauce of your choice. At home, we mix together soy sauce and Patak's Lime Relish, which we get in Indian stores or the Asian section of supermarkets.