“My main issue with this class was the clarity of directions. Part of this was an issue with class size. Since the class was quite large (16 or so) and there was only instructor with no one helping her out, and because the class was not in a kitchen setting (it was in an extremely loud brewery, also a real problem) the teacher was constantly plagued with chores just to get everyone through the recipe. As a result, almost no teaching occurred. Often times the teacher would give the instructions very generally. Making dumplings isn’t particularly tough, but often times students will need guidance on the level of hydration their dough should be at, what it should look and feel like, ways of testing if it has been kneaded enough. These are all techniques and advice that you expect from a cooking class, but that was not information made available to us. The majority of the class involved mincing vegetables, which is the skill that you can develop most easily at home. During the dumpling wrapping stage of the class, the teacher attempted to show an example of how thin to roll the dough, but got frustrated when the dough kept tearing on her rolling pin, eventually adding a small sliver of filling, and then wrapped the dough into a tortellini shape. The dough was considerably thicker than prescribed, and also had a hole through which the filling leaked out. She said, “just make sure there aren’t holes when you do it” and moved on. I don’t think this is really on the instructor though, as she truly had so much to do on her plate, and far too many students to be attentive and careful with instruction. However it meant the class had no precision whatsoever. No ingredients were portioned ahead of time, so everything was eyeballed. With dough, you really can’t eyeball it. Everyone was handed a cup of water to add to their flour, and no two cups had the same amount of water. We were told to add more water if needed. How would we know if the dough needed water? Similarly, when making the filling the instructor added nearly all of the seasonings for the students. This meant she had even more chores to do, and to alleviate that extra workload, she merely eyeballed every single seasoning ingredient. Except for salt and pepper and garlic powder which the students weee encouraged to season to taste, despite being a filling with raw chicken. The lack of an authentic dumpling wrapping method was a big disappointment, as learning to make a gyoza or Shumai style dumpling was part of our excitement for taking the class. There’s really nothing “Asian” about making tortellini shaped dumplings in an Asian Dumpling making class. Even when cooking the dumplings at the end there was virtually no guidance. We were all given frying pans with no lids, meaning steam and oil droplets constantly escaped, and the walls of the dumplings weren’t able to cook using the residual heat like you would usually use frying dumplings. Additionally the frying pan temperature was set for us, which would’ve been nice if it wasn’t set at a variety of levels. Multiple students had blackened and burned dumplings when they flipped them over because their pans were set too hot. We carefully watched our dumplings, and even ours cooked way faster than the time our instructor told us to give each side. It also meant that the dumplings had a slight raw flour taste because the walls of the dumplings were twice as thick because of the tortellini shape and couldn’t cook properly. The instructor’s directions were also occasionally confusing. When we first rolled out our dumpling wrappers we were told to form our ball into a rope the width of our rolling pin. The first team to do that showed the instructor, who loudly chastised them for not listening to directions and making a rope the length of the rolling pin. She had clearly said width at the beginning of the lesson, and kinda harped on them for a minute for “not lsitening”. Of course not listening in the space was pretty easy, considering it was an active and loud brewery on a Friday night and hearing the instructor at all was very difficult. Even at the end when we had finished cooking, we weren’t given any notes or advice on our final product. The instructor whipped together a sauce for each person individually (again, very time consuming and more work for her) and eyeballed the ingredients so imprecisely that my partner’s sauce had a full centimeter of undissolved sugar sitting at the bottom. The entire experience felt like it badly lacked direction, expertise, and precision, all vital elements of any class trying to teach new cooking skills. Oh and No. The picture for the class is in no way representative of what you are making. It’s about as far as you could get.”
