Costco is selling Ling Ling potstickers and I recently brought a bag home with me. You get a little over four pounds of potstickers per bag and they are filled mostly with chicken and cabbage.
If you are at Costco wondering if you should buy these or not then I would strongly recommend against it as these were the worst potstickers I have ever eaten.
Calories and Nutrition
Five of the Ling Ling potstickers are a single serving and have the following calories and nutritional information:
- Calories: 270
- Fat: 6g (7% DV)
- Cholesterol: 30mg (11% DV)
- Sodium: 570mg (25% DV)
- Carbohydrates: 41g (15% DV)
- Protein: 13g
When you add in a tbsp of the included dipping sauce you get an extra 20 calories and 460mg of sodium.
These potstickers are heathier than Bibigo’s Beef Bulgogi Mandu Dumplings so that is at least one positive thing they have going for them.
How to Cook
The recommended way to cook these potstickers is to:
- Add 1 tablespoon of oil to a skillet and coat the skillet evenely.
- Place the frozen potstickers in a single layer into the pan without crowding them.
- Add about a half cup of water to the skillet.
- Bring the water to a boil, then cover the skillet and simmer he potstickers on Medium High for 8 minutes.
- Uncover the pan and continue cooking until all of the water has evaporated.
This is the method I followed and it was pretty straightforward.
Ling Ling provides an alternative cooking method the involves bring a pot of water to a boil, adding the frozen dumplings and boiling for five minutes.
They advise against trying to cook the potstickers in a microwave.
I Do Not Like Them
These potstickers got three strikes from me and I threw the rest of the bag out after I tried the first batch,
Strike 1: The dumplings look ugly to me. They came out slightly browned on the bottom but had an unattractive, slightly greasy shine that I wasn’t excited to put in my mouth.
Strike 2: The wrapper is a thick, chewy dough. I like dumplings that have thin, almost delicate wrappers and these were giant doughballs.
Strike 3: The filling was watery and bland. After you fight your way through the thick wrapper you are rewarded with a pile of wet cabbage.
The only two positive things I can say about these dumplings is that the teriyaki style dipping sauce was tasty and I wasn’t tempted to break my diet while eating these.
If you are at Costco and want some good potstickers then put down the ones from Ling Lang and grab a bag of Bibigo Mandu Bulgogi Chicken Dumplings.
Price
I bought the 67.2 ounce bag of potstickers on sale for $7.49 but they are regularly priced at $10.49. At the regular price these dumplings cost $0.156 per ounce.
You can buy a 24 ounce package of these potstickers from Target for $7.99 which works out to a cost of $0.332 per ounce.
This means that you will save $0.18 per ounce (53%) when you but the dumplings at Costco.
You can’t say these are the worst potsticker you have eaten since these are the only potsticker you have eaten. Everything else are just dumplings. Potsticker is a cooking method for dumplings where the bottom is crisped and the rest of the dumpling is steamed. Dumpling skin thickness depends on the region those style originated. Some rustic or old styles are thin, while the modern trend is to as thin as they can be while not breaking during cooking. Overstuffing is also not necessarily an indicator of good dumpling. Some of the most fanciest ones has very small amount of filling, to go with the barely negligible wrapper.
I boil the dumplings and lightly fry them in butter. I would not buy them again but cooked in this way makes a tender dumpling. I prefer pierogis. I do not like sweet meat.
Chicken and veggies completely ground into a paste (ewwww) and injected by a sausage shooter, tough rubbery dough. No seasoning so bland taste. Shouldn`t be called asian food because they aren`t authentic asian and I don`t consider them to be authentic food. If they tried to sell these in China they would be arrested and tried for crimes against humanity. I had bad gas pains the following day and we threw away more than a half a bag. What a waste of money. Generally we trust Costco foods but these imatation asian dumplins turn my stomach.