A Review of the Book "Let’s Make Dumplings!"

Trying to find a creative and tasty homemade item to have on a cold day or bring to your next holiday potluck, such as Thanksgiving? Let’s Make Dumplings! is a wonderful reference cookbook for those new to dumpling making or people with much experience yet would like to learn new dumpling techniques and recipes. I was totally surprised by the well thought out and well designed book.

Although there is a subtitle of “A Comic Book Cookbook,” it is better explained as a cookbook than a graphic novel. The illustrations are well detailed, and fun to look at.

The images are illustrated as if they are inspired from photos or from YouTube cooking channels. They are colorful and emphasize well what the authors are explaining with their text. As the old adage goes, “a picture is worth a thousand words,” this cookbook utilizes the benefits of illustrations compared to cookbooks with just words or photos. Many other cookbooks and magazine food stylists’ photos or YouTube cooking videos may intimidate cooks to show a “perfect” vision of a dish. The illustrations in Let’s Make Dumplings! are approachable and encourages the reader to make the dish instead providing the reader a good general idea of what the dish should look like.

Let’s Make Dumplings! is well organized, addressing the following about dumpling making:

History

Ingredients

Equipment

How to Make Dumpling Wrappers from Scratch

Recipes

• Dumpling Wrappers

• Dumpling Wrapping Folds

• Savory Dumplings

• Sweet Dumplings

• Dips

Hugo Amano and Sarah Becan show and share their love of dumpling making in this cookbook. Let’s Make Dumplings! is a sequel to their comic cookbook Let’s Make Ramen! Both Hugo Amano and Sarah Becan have a lot of experience in cooking and creating cookbooks. Although not mentioned in the book title, this cookbook focuses on Asian dumplings. This cookbook is thorough in the dumpling making equipment and techniques. There are recipes for well known Asian dumplings such as gyoza, xiaolongbao, siu mai, and wonton. Amano and Becan shared recipes of lesser well known dumplings such as Siopao Asado (Filipino Pork Buns), and Num Khom (Sweet Cambodian Rice Dumplings).

There is an exclamation mark at the end of this book's title. The exclamation in the book’s title is well-suited, as this cookbook is an exciting and fun cookbook to go through, learning and celebrating cooking the recipes. This book is worthwhile for anyone interested in homemade Asian dumplings, foodies, and anyone who enjoys dumplings as a kind of comfort food. Making these freshly handmade dumplings is challenging yet highly rewarding. I cannot recommend Let’s Make Dumplings! highly enough!

Rating: 9 out of 10

I would give it a higher rating if it showed other dumplings from around the world, or changed the cookbook’s name to Let’s Make Asian Dumplings! It would be nice to have the authors create a cookbook to address this.