Half-Day Xi’an Local Family Visit & Dumpling Making

Day-by-day Itinerary

1. Day 1: Xi'an Family Cooking Class: Dumpling Making

   At 8:30 am, your driver and tour guide will meet you at your hotel lobby. Go to a local morning market to buy the ingredients you will use today. See many vegetables you may never have seen before and learn about their role in local life.

   Once the ingredients have been purchased, your warm and welcoming host will greet you and guide you through the art of Chinese cooking, with a particular focus on the finer points of making dumplings.

   In China, dumplings symbolize family reunion. To enrich your experience, under the host’s guidance, you’ll personally knead the dough, roll out the wrappers, and fill them, learning to shape the dumplings into ruffled edges or ingot shapes.

   

   Add the dumplings to cold water, and once the water comes to a boil, start cooking them. How do you tell when the dumplings are done? There’s a trick to it. Raw dumplings will sink to the bottom; generally, when all the dumplings float to the surface, puff up, and the wrappers become translucent, they’re done. Meat-filled dumplings should be cooked for 3 minutes longer than vegetarian ones.

   When eating dumplings, you can choose to have them dry-tossed, served in a sour soup, or dipped in a vinegar-based sauce.

   Meanwhile, learn how to make appetizers and cold dishes to pair with dumplings, such as smashed cucumber or cold spinach salad, depending on the seasonal vegetables.

   You have the opportunity to chat with your hosts over the meal and gain an up-close insight into the daily life of a local family – getting a perspective quite different from that of traditional attractions.

   At the end, the tour guide will take you back to your hotel. This concludes your Xi'an home visit and dumpling-making class.