A couple of weeks ago Yasu brought home some gyoza skins as we were planning a party with some Japanese friends, and he wanted to make some gyoza. The party has since fallen through because they are having a party at their place instead, so the two packets of gyoza had been sitting in the freezer ever since.

I had been thinking of making some gyoza, the only problem was i didn’t have any pork mince. I decided to use the lamb mince that i had, and scoured the internet for a recipe for lamb gyoza. I couldn’t find any. I thought it was strange, they had chicken, beef, and pork gyoza, but no lamb.

I’ve since found out why there are no recipes. Lamb in gyoza is not a good idea. Quite frankly, it smells. And the smell and taste overpowers the ginger and garlic in the gyoza. I found that out last night when i made them. Yasu has always said that lamb is smelly, that’s why Japanese don’t eat it very much. But i had never noticed, maybe because i grew up eating it. Anyway after i started filling the gyoza skins with lamb and they started to cook, i then knew exactly what he was talking about, and the taste of the lamb overpowered all the other flavours.

Luckily, Yasu loves lamb and he declared the gyoza to be “oishii”, yum, in other words, but for me, it totally ruined the gyoza experience. I will not be making it again with lamb! I’m really such a pork gyoza girl. I don’t really even like the seafood gyoza they sometimes have at restaurants, because i’m not really into seafood.

So, if anyone out there is searching for a lamb gyoza recipe – DON’T DO IT!

Also, has anyone ever put anything other than seafood, or pork into gyoza, and if so, what were the results?

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