Huixiang Jiaozi

northern Chinese dumplings filled with a great weight of chopped fennel fronds and pork, where the fennel is the vegetable rather than the seasoning

Origin: Shandong, Hebei & the Northern Chinese Plain

From the journey of Fennel.

Almost nobody outside China treats fennel greenery as a leaf vegetable, and northern China treats it as little else. Huíxiāng fronds are sold in bundles like spinach in the markets of Shandong, Hebei, and Shaanxi from spring onwards, and their principal destination is a dumpling: chopped fine, squeezed dry, and mixed with pork in a proportion closer to equal weights than to a seasoning. A plate of huixiang jiaozi is emphatically green inside. The Chinese name records the confusion the plant caused when it arrived along the Silk Road. 茴香 means returning fragrance, and the language then had to separate fennel from the unrelated native plant that tastes remarkably similar: fennel is 小茴香, the small one, and star anise 大茴香, the big one. Two plants from different families, one aromatic compound in common, and a pair of names that admits it. The technique is ordinary jiaozi practice with one variation that matters. The fronds hold a great deal of water, so they are salted, wrung out hard, and then dressed with oil before the pork goes anywhere near them; the oil coats the greens and stops them weeping again into the filling, which would otherwise turn to a puddle and split the wrappers during boiling. Chinese cooks do this with every watery dumpling green, cabbage and courgette included. Dumplings in the north are a household activity rather than a dish, made in quantity by several pairs of hands, and huixiang is a spring and early summer filling in a calendar that runs through the year: chives in spring, courgette in summer, cabbage and pork in winter, and lamb with cumin wherever the northwest reaches.

Ingredients

Dough

  • 400 g plain flour
  • 210 ml cold water, approximately
  • 0.5 tsp salt

Filling

  • 450 g fennel fronds and fine stems, or the tops of 5 fennel bulbs plus a large bunch of dill
  • 2 tsp salt, for drawing the greens
  • 400 g minced pork, not too lean
  • 3 tbsp toasted sesame oil
  • 2 tbsp light soy sauce
  • 1 tbsp Shaoxing wine
  • 1 tbsp fresh ginger, finely grated
  • 3 spring onions, finely chopped
  • 1 tsp white pepper
  • 1 tsp salt, for the filling

To serve

  • 4 tbsp black vinegar and chilli oil, to serve

Method

  1. Make the dough: mix the flour, salt, and cold water into a firm dough, knead for eight minutes until smooth, and rest it covered for thirty.
  2. Chop the fennel fronds very finely, discarding anything thick or stringy.
  3. Toss them with the 2 tsp of salt and leave in a colander for fifteen minutes, then squeeze them hard in a cloth. A great deal of green water comes out.
  4. Dress the wrung fennel with the sesame oil first, before anything else touches it. The oil coats the greens and stops them weeping back into the filling, which is what splits dumplings in the pot.
  5. Mix the pork with the soy, wine, ginger, spring onion, white pepper, and remaining salt, stirring in one direction until it turns tacky.
  6. Fold the oiled fennel through the pork. The filling should look predominantly green.
  7. Roll the dough into ropes, cut into 12g pieces, and roll each into a disc about 8cm across, thinner at the edge than the centre.
  8. Put a heaped teaspoon of filling in the middle, fold into a half-moon, and pleat one side against the other, pressing firmly to seal.
  9. Bring a large pan of water to a rolling boil and drop the dumplings in, stirring once so they do not stick to the base.
  10. When the water returns to the boil, add a cup of cold water. Do this three times, which is the standard northern method and cooks the filling through without bursting the wrappers.
  11. They are ready when they float and the wrappers look glossy and slightly translucent, about eight to ten minutes in all.
  12. Lift them out with a slotted spoon and serve at once with black vinegar and chilli oil for dipping.

Notes

Salt and wring the fennel, then oil it before mixing: those two steps decide whether the dumplings hold. Use the fine feathery fronds and discard the thick stems, which stay stringy. If you cannot get bunched fennel greens, the tops from bought bulbs plus a generous bunch of dill get close in both look and flavour. The three additions of cold water during boiling is not folklore; it drops the temperature briefly so the filling cooks through before the wrapper overcooks. They freeze extremely well raw on a floured tray and go into the water from frozen with two minutes added.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

Mapping Culinary History

To explore — select an ingredient below.

Journey Point Map Key

Ingredient originTrade or transit route
Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
© 2026 The Gastrographer. All original research, narratives, and illustrations. All rights reserved.