Birthday Potstickers And Pizza Puffs

There's a frozen bag of potstickers Megan and I love getting at the store, but it's fairly spendy and we wanted to try making our own to save on costs and tweak the flavors. Having done this several times now, we decided to make two different kinds of potstickers for my recent birthday bash.

Here we're starting the filling for our potstickers using ground turkey, but we've also had good success with ground pork and chicken as well. Also going into the mix are garlic powder, green onions, soy sauce, dijon mustard, ketchup, eggs, and diced bell pepper.

Everything is thoroughly mixed together so each potsticker has a little bit of everything.

The 'stickers are individually wrapped up in a wonton wrapper - it's a bit time consuming, but can be fun if you get everyone involved.

Here's a cutting board covered in a batch getting ready to go. We tried out several different ways to fold them - pick whichever one looks the best to you or is the easiest to do on a large scale.

The finished potstickers hit the frying pan with some hot oil.

Eventually the bottoms get crispy, giving a crunch on the bottom and a soft texture on the top.

We didn't just do turkey for my birthday, however, as there's another kind of food I'm a fanatic about - anything involving buffalo chicken!  Here we are cooking some diced chicken breast.

Next we threw in green onions and some standard garlic and pepper seasonings.

The seasonings were followed of course by our own homemade buffalo sauce!

Here Megan is putting together one of these non-traditional potstickers with two wonton wrappers - wetting the edges by dabbing her finger in a cup of water and then running it along the edges, spooning in a teaspoon of the filling, and then setting the wrappers over each other.

These can also be made in a large quantity ahead of time and frozen - just be sure to lightly brush them with flour so they don't stick together.

Here we've got some of our second batch of frozen potstickers going.

This is both varieties together - buffalo on the left, turkey on the right. We fried the buffalo ones in more oil for a more crispy finish.

Remember our recent "finger foods" like pull apart pizza or bacon alfredo puffs? We also did another take on a simple, all-in-one snack/meal for the birthday shenanigans. Here Megan has made our regular pizza dough, rolled it out into several small circles, and then topped them with tomato sauce, pepperoni, and three kinds of cheese (gouda, mozzarella, and cheddar).

These little pizza puffs are then rolled up into large balls, like a mini-calzone or stromboli.

Here's several of them together getting ready to go.

After all being rolled up, the tops are brushed with olive oil and dusted with Italian seasonings.

Here they are coming out of the oven, golden-brown on top and gooey and cheesy inside.

And for the big finale Megan had some fun with dry ice and a green appletini Crystal Light punch!

Check back in soon for a new entry in the culinary world tour, more unique pizza creations, and the start of grilling season 2013!