Stuffed with sweet kabocha squash and miso-glazed eggplant, these Oyaki Japanese dumplings are a popular snack in Nagano Prefecture in central Japan.
As the weather chills and you spend more time in the comfort of your home, I thought it would be nice to share a fun Japanese dumpling recipe that will keep you busy in the kitchen. You – and maybe your kids too – get to play with flour, making the dough from scratch, and stuffing the dumplings with your favorite fillings!
I love making Oyaki (おやき) – Japanese Stuffed Dumplings – this time of year. They are such delicious comfort food on cold days, so I just had to introduce them to you today.
What is Oyaki?
Oyaki (おやき) are stuffed dumplings that originated in Nagano Prefecture. The chewy oyaki dough is made from wheat flour or a mixture of wheat flour and buckwheat flour and stuffed with a variety of yummy fillings. The fillings are generally made from vegetarian ingredients such as fresh seasonal vegetables, mushrooms, beans, or pickles.
These rustic, homemade oyaki dumplings have played an important role in Nagano’s regional cuisine for generations. Located in central Japan, Nagano has steep mountains and a cold climate, so rice cultivation was very difficult. Instead, soba (buckwheat) became the main crop, with Nagano yielding the 2nd highest production by volume in Japan, only behind Hokkaido.
Oyaki may not be fancy food, but these humble treats from Nagano are a symbol of necessity, comfort, and sustainability.
How Oyaki is Cooked
Oyaki were traditionally cooked and charred in the ash of an open fire in an irori (囲炉裏) hearth. These days, oyaki at specialty stores are typically roasted on an iron pan, then either steamed or broiled before enjoying piping hot.
To cook oyaki at home, you can try one of these methods:
- Steamed
- Pan-fried then steamed
- Steamed and then pan-fried
- Deep-fried
Personally, I like to pan-fry oyaki first to give them a nice char, and then steam till they are cooked. But I encourage you to try a few methods to find your favorite way of preparing Japanese stuffed dumplings.
Popular Fillings for Oyaki
The type of fillings (or An 餡 in Japanese) for oyaki vary with region, with each area having its own local specialty. Today’s Oyaki recipe includes sweet and savory kabocha squash and miso-glazed eggplant fillings. They are very popular fillings for Japanese dumplings.
But there are endless choices of ingredients to stuff oyaki with. Here’s a list to give you some ideas to play with:
- Nozawana (a pickled leafy green famous in Nagano)
- Various mushrooms
- Kiriboshi Daikon (recipe coming soon!)
- Negimiso (leeks and miso)
- Walnut miso
- Hijiki seaweed dressed with walnut
- Sweet azuki read beans (anko)
- Sesame miso
- Potatoes
- Fukinoto (butterbur sprout)
- Fukinoto miso
- Warabi (bracken)
- Japanese sweet potatoes
- Gobo (burdock root)
- Kinpira Gobo
- Local Shinshu salmon
- Jidori chicken
- Apple
These ingredients are often seasoned with soy sauce or miso for savory dumplings and sweetened with sugar for sweet dumplings. The dough doesn’t have much taste, so make sure to add extra flavor to the fillings so the oyaki won’t taste bland.
There are so many creative fillings and seasonings to try. Have fun experimenting with new flavors!
How to Serve Oyaki
Oyaki is a great snack or side dish for a meal. Serve oyaki with a cold beer in the summer and hot tea in the winter. And when you have a chance to visit Nagano Prefecture, don’t forget to try these healthy and delicious snacks in specialty shops and food stalls!
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Oyaki (Japanese Stuffed Dumplings)
Ingredients
For the Dough
- 2½ cups all-purpose flour (plain flour)
- 200 ml boiling water (1 cup minus 2½ Tbsp)
- 1 tsp neutral oil
- ¼ tsp Diamond Crystal kosher salt
For the Eggplant Filling
- 2 Japanese or Chinese eggplants
- 1 Tbsp toasted sesame oil
- 1 Tbsp sugar (you can reduce if you‘d like; the dough tastes rather bland, so make sure the filling has a strong flavor)
- 1 Tbsp miso
- 2 shiso leaves (perilla/ooba) (julienned; optional)
For the Kabocha Filling
- 12 oz kabocha squash (¼ kabocha with seeds)
- 1 Tbsp neutral oil
- ¼ cup water
- 1 Tbsp sugar (you can reduce if you‘d like; if you prefer a more savory taste, you can increase the amount of soy sauce but you will need to add some sugar to balance out the salty flavor and can‘t omit it completely)
- 1 tsp soy sauce
- 1 pinch Diamond Crystal kosher salt
For Cooking
- 1 Tbsp neutral oil
Instructions
- Gather all the ingredients.
To Make Dough
- Using a fine-mesh strainer, sift 2½ cups all-purpose flour (plain flour) into a large bowl. Combine 200 ml boiling water (1 cup minus 2½ Tbsp), 1 tsp neutral oil, and ¼ tsp Diamond Crystal kosher salt.
- Mix the dry ingredients and wet ingredients with chopsticks until you can pick up the dough with your hands.
- Use the dough to pick up the crumbs in the bowl.
- Knead on a lightly floured surface for about 3 minutes, until a smooth dough forms. In Japan, we say “knead until the texture is like your earlobe.”
- Form the dough into a ball, put it back in the bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let it rest at room temperature for at least 30 minutes or longer. Letting the dough rest increases its elasticity making it easier to work with later, so please don‘t skip.
To Make the Eggplant Filling
- While the dough rests, make the fillings. Remove the stems of 2 Japanese or Chinese eggplants and cut it half lengthwise. Then, slice into half circles. Soak in water for 5–10 minutes. (Meanwhile, you can cut the kabocha). Drain well and set aside.
- Heat 1 Tbsp toasted sesame oil in a large frying pan and sauté the eggplant until it is coated with oil. Cover the lid and cook on low heat for 5 minutes.
- When tender, add 1 Tbsp sugar and combine well.
- Add 1 Tbsp miso. Add 2 shiso leaves (perilla/ooba) that you‘ve julienned into thin strips. Mix well together. Transfer to a dish to let cool.
To Make the Kabocha Filling
- Cut 12 oz kabocha squash into smaller wedges and remove the skin. (See my post on How To Cut a Kabocha Squash.)
- Cut each wedge into thin slices and then cut into thin strips.
- Heat 1 Tbsp neutral oil in the frying pan and sauté the kabocha. When it’s coated with oil, add ¼ cup water and cook covered for 5 minutes on low heat.
- Add 1 Tbsp sugar and combine well.
- Add 1 tsp soy sauce and 1 pinch Diamond Crystal kosher salt. Mix well together.
- Transfer to the dish to let cool.
To Shape into Oyaki
- Roll out the rested dough into a rectangular or circle shape and divide it into 12 pieces.
- Make each dough into a ball then press down with your hand.
- Stretch the dough to 10 cm (4 inches) in diameter. The important trick is to keep the center thicker than the edges. Using your fingers, stretch the outer edges by rotating the dough. This way, when you pinch the dough to seal, the dough won’t be too thick/too much.
- Place about 1 Tbsp of the filling in the center of each piece of dough. Close the oyaki by bringing the dough up over the filling, pinching at the top to seal.
- After pinching the dough, put the pinched-side down on a lightly floured surface and twist a few times. Then press the top of the oyaki a little bit into a slightly flat ball.
To Cook the Oyaki
- Set up a steamer by placing a steamer basket on top of a wok/pot filled with enough boiling water. Tip: If you don’t have a steamer, after cooking the oyaki in a frying pan, add ¼ cup water to the pan. Cover with a lid and steam it until the water evaporates.
- Heat 1 Tbsp neutral oil in a frying pan (12 inch) and cook the oyaki, pinched-side down.
- Pan-fry for 3–4 minutes each side, or until golden brown.
- Transfer the oyaki to a steamer basket and cover to cook on high heat for 15–20 minutes (depending on the size of the oyaki and filling—a small one should take about 10 minutes). Make sure the lid is covered with a kitchen towel so the condensation on the lid doesn’t fall onto the oyaki.
- When they are done steaming, transfer to a wire rack (I use a bamboo strainer) where the heat can escape from the bottom.
To Serve and Store
- Enjoy the Oyaki immediately. As soon as they become warm, not hot, cover the leftovers with plastic wrap (I wrap individually). Don’t wait until completely cooled down. You can freeze to store for up to a month, and re-steam to enjoy later.
I’m not sure what led me to this recipe, as I had never heard of oyaki in my Asian dumpling explorations before. But I’m glad I found it – these are terrific! I whipped up 15 each of the eggplant and kabocha oyaki on short notice for a potluck and wasn’t able to source buckwheat flour or shiso in time. Even so, they were some tasty dumplings. As dumplings go, they’re dead simple to make – the unleavened dough is very forgiving and the fillings don’t require too much prep. Much easier to whip up a batch of these than baozi or most potsticker/gyoza variations. And the result is a good, hearty, healthy, vegetarian dumpling. Really great.
I do want to play around with the fillings just a little bit more for my next batch (which will probably be for Thanksgiving next week). I think the eggplant filling will gain a lot from the shiso and will be perfect with that. For the kabocha filling, I saw another recipe online that mashed the kabocha but then included some black sesame seeds and chopped walnuts to add crunch and visual variety. That strikes me as a fine idea. And I think the buckwheat flour will be a great addition for both varieties too.
Thanks for leading me to oyaki, Nami! Another fine recipe. Thanks for all your hard work on JOC.
Hi Todd! I’m so happy you tried this recipe and thank you for your kind feedback. You must be an excellent cook! You had never eaten this recipe before yet you made these for the first time for a potluck! 😀 I like the kabocha with sesame seeds and walnut idea! Eggplant and shiso are a golden combination, although shiso is so hard to find in most places. 🙁 Thank you again for trying out this recipe!
Heh… not sure if I’m excellent or just bull-headed. 🙂 I knew I wanted to try the recipe for Thanksgiving and figured the potluck was a good place to test it out. But my work colleagues sure ate up the oyaki! If I hadn’t made several batches of baozi before, I might have been more reluctant. I could see the forming was going to be similar here, so I wasn’t too worried about it. Baozi are way harder than these.
I definitely look forward to the shiso/eggplant combo. I can get shiso leaves at the Japanese market, but that’s a half-hour drive in the other direction from where I needed to be yesterday. I asked the workers at the (Korean-centric) H-Mart and they didn’t even know what I was talking about. But I’ll get the shiso from Mitsuwa for the Thanksgiving batch!
Thanks for the kind words.
I believe practicing and making mistakes make us a better cook. And yeah your Baozi experience definitely helped! Your coworkers are very lucky. 🙂 Good luck with Thanksgiving batch! And happy thanksgiving!
Found some buckwheat flour, got the shiso, and made the Thanksgiving batch as planned. Terrific snack for Thanksgiving Day lounging around my mom’s house. And the oyaki fulfilled their mission of keeping me from snacking through a whole plate of cheese. My kids still don’t love the eggplant variety, though my daughter is getting better at making them (she’s an 11yo dumpling-forming enthusiast).
I roasted the kabocha this time, then mashed it and mixed it up with the sugar, some chopped toasted walnuts, and some black sesame seeds. I liked that approach a lot just because it’s so darn easy. Just cut the kabocha into wedges as usual, leave the skin on, rub with a bit of olive oil, salt, and pepper and roast at 400F for half an hour or so. Then it’s easy to cut the meat away from the skin after it’s cooked. Quite a bit simpler than slicing and sauteing and also easier to do simultaneously with the eggplant prep.
I’ve been on a big Asian-cooking kick the last six months or so and it’s been tremendously fun, educational, and tasty. And JOC has been the largest single source of recipes that I’ve loved. So Happy Thanksgiving, Nami! You work so hard at this site and I’m thankful for all your efforts.
Hi Todd! Thank you so much for writing your feedback, which I enjoyed reading very much! Good suggestion on roasting kabocha. I love roasting vegetables and it adds so much flavor by that. I can imagine the filling taste better with some char flavor too. Delicious!
Thank you also for your kind comment. Feedback like yours inspires me and Mr. JOC to work harder to improve the site. We always wish we have more time… so many things we want to do! Hope you continue to enjoy the site and please feel free to reach out if you have any feedback, questions, or suggestions. 🙂 Thank you Todd!
[…] Oyaki (Japanese Stuffed Dumplings) おやき […]
I’d like to make a sweet potato oyaki to surprise my Japanese mother (she loves sweet potatoes). Would I just substitute the sweet potato for the kobacha?
Hi Loree! Yes, you can do that. Kabocha and sweet potato are pretty similar sweetness (maybe sweet potato is slightly sweeter). So it should work fine. Hope your mom will enjoy it!
These look so wonderful! I was wondering if they can be frozen and if so, after what step? Thanks for sharing!
Hi Amber! You need to freeze after you steamed and covered with plastic wrap. You can resteam to enjoy. 🙂
Thank you, Nami! Cannot wait to make these!
Hi! I am currently in the steaming phase of this recipe and it already smells so good! This is my first time making dumplings and I had a great time following your easy steps 🙂 Thank you so much for sharing this!
Hi Taylor! Aww I’m so happy to hear that my instruction was easy to follow. Thanks so much for your feedback. Hope you enjoyed making and eating this. 🙂
Hello,
I was wondering if these were at all freezer friendly? We are a two person household and I’d hate to waste such wonderful snacks!
Hi Ashley! Yes, a lot of people freeze oyaki and enjoy it later. I have never done it as we finish eating it… but I believe it’ll be fine (and actually better to freeze freshly made oyaki than keeping in the fridge for a couple of days).
Would you consider this a recipe that is a good introduction to eggplant if someone hasn’t actually had it before but is curious enough to try? The recipe looks delicious.
Hi Julieanne! Good question! First of all, this eggplants are sweeten. Considering that’s rare, maybe there’s a hope? Depends on what part of eggplant he/she doesn’t like. If that’s the texture… well, not much changes compared to others… if it’s taste, maybe sweeten eggplants may be unexpected. Hard to tell…. 🙂 Make a small portion in case it’s not so popular? 😉
These oyaki look so delicious and remind me of yaki manju–except they’re more savory. Thank you for sharing this recipe!
Hi Donna! Indeed, we can put red bean paste in these to make it sweets too. I will be sharing Manju recipe in December (really delicious!). 🙂
This looks amazing! I like how the oyaki can be a vehicle for endless possibilities of fillings. I’m marking this to make over the Thanksgiving long weekend. 🙂
Hi Kimmi! Yes indeed! I was tempted to make anko (red bean paste) one… but tried to keep it vegetarian/vegan/savory theme. 😀 Hope you enjoy making and eating these during the holiday. Happy Thanksgiving!
Thank you for the recipe Nami! I didn’t have kabocha, so I used a mix of sweet potato and butternut squash, and they turned out pretty good! (Though this was my first time eating oyaki, so I don’t have anything to compare it to. 😅)
Hi Logan! Oh I can imagine!!! I love the combination and I can imagine the taste! Great choice!!! Thank you so much for trying this recipe! 🙂
These look just incredible. I am curious about what dipping sauce you’d recommend to go with these? I can see you might not need one, but I have family that would like a dip regardless.
Hi Skeena69! Thank you! No dipping sauce, which is why the filling has to have good seasonings not bland. So if the filling is savory, then should be salty enough, if sweet, then enough sugar should go in.
If you like dipping… how about soy sauce based sauce? I might go with soy sauce + rice vinegar (to lighten up) and maybe chili oil? That sounds like gyoza dipping sauce though. LOL.
How I miss oyaki! I’m partial to the nozawa filling, but I have to say the eggplant version looks good. And the kabocha version.
Question: If I wanted to include buckwheat flour, I know I can’t use 100% buckwheat. Do you just substitute one cup of the all-purpose flour with buckwheat flour?
And no, the earlobe thing is uniquely Japanese. =)
Hi Brian! It’s hard for me to pick between all these 3 choices. I was thinking of making nozawana if I could find in Japanese grocery stores, but I thought it’s way too difficult to find for majority of people, so I made with kabocha and eggplant this time.
I did not test with buckwheat flour, so I can’t give the right amount. You totally could do 50% buckwheat flour 50% all purpose flour (if you’re not gluten). Some do 100% buckwheat too.
Ohhh so earlobe thing is Japanese! So how would you explain the texture? Any similar texture to earlobe in western explanation?
I do know that you cannot make soba with 100% buckwheat flour, for example, because the dough will not hold together. I suspect that your gluten-free readers will need to try other combinations that include buckwheat to get the right texture.
As for the earlobe question, I think the texture we are looking for would be described as ‘soft, yet pliable’. HTH! =)
I love Oyaki! I first had it in Azumino, Nagano Prefecture. Later the place where I was staying at a woman taught me how to make these personally. I’m so glad that I was able to taste Oyaki and for her kind help so I can enjoy them here in the states. I’m going to try your fillings and make some up for thanksgiving! Thank you for sharing this recipe.
Hi Sean! What a cool experience to learn from the local. I was going to Azumino too this past summer too but couldn’t make it. Did you enjoy your visit? Hope you enjoy this recipe and Happy Thanksgiving!
Nozawana and Nasu are my favorite Oyaki! I will be going to Nagano in March and look forward to my oyaki fix! ????
Hi Lily! I’m jealous! I hope I get to have some time to visit Nagano next summer. Enjoy Nozawana & Nasu oyaki in March as well as homemade version!
Hi Nami,
Thank you for the recipe! I can’t wait to try this! To sub for buckwheat flour would you just use the same amount as you would for regular flour? Thanks!
Hi Nami, I have the same question as Charlotte. I follow a gluten free diet and I do have some buckwheat flour in my cupboard right now (which you probably know doesn’t have gluten). I would love to make these!
Any tips on trying it will all buckwheat flour?
Thank you!
Hi Kita! I’m not too sure you could also receive my response to Charlotte, so I’ll respond separately.
For this recipe, I didn’t test with buckwheat flour, so I am not sure about the exact amount. You probably need to slowly add water to get the texture you need (the texture of ear lobe). Hope it’ll work out for you. Sorry wish I could help more.
Hi Charlotte! I did not test this recipe with buckwheat flour so I am not sure exact amount you’ll need. Some people use 100% buckwheat but most people use half and half (with all purpose flour). I wish I could help…
Here’s the recipe with 100% buckwheat flour recipe (in Japanese – use Google chrome translation): https://recipe.rakuten.co.jp/recipe/1520011020/
These look so delicious, Nami! I’ll have to save this to try out in the future!
Hope you enjoy this recipe, Krystine! 🙂