An Ode To The Cheeseburger Dumpling 

Before the pandemic, three or four generations of my family would sometimes gather around the dining table at my parents’ home in the suburbs near Toronto to wrap pork dumplings or bundles of sticky rice, hundreds at a time.

My mom, aunts and grandmother would share stories about growing up in Hong Kong—of summers on the beach, living on a rat-infested fishing boat, of fleeing China’s civil war and starting over. An aunt might subtly whisper to me the embarrassing but funny origins of my dad’s childhood nickname. I’d interrupt the story to ask what an unfamiliar Cantonese word meant. My sister would guide her daughter’s tiny hands as they folded, pleated, pinched. Together we unraveled the tangled history of our transcontinental clans.

After hours on the assembly line, we would part ways with full hearts, bringing home our bounties to stuff into freezers.

Like many second-generation kids raised in Toronto, I felt closer to a third culture, not Hong Konger nor “Canadian” (whatever that means, anyway) but something in-between.

Read next: The Book That Helped Me Understand My Mother

My after-school routine was Cantonese lessons or basketball practices, followed by drive-thru McDonald’s for cheeseburgers. On Saturday afternoons we drove to Chinatown, my dad lingering in bookstores while my mom picked over the fresh produce.

Shamefully, I feel the closest to my roots when I’m eating our food. Connecting to my culture through literal consumption is low-hanging fruit compared to doing the hard things. I never mastered spoken Cantonese and never learned to read my dad’s Chinese books. I stumble over complicated words and forget the titles assigned to each member of my family tree. I can’t remember the mythologies surrounding our many traditional holidays. I slacked on the most difficult and tedious endeavours of being an immigrant’s kid, and a part of who I could have been has remained dormant since.

The pandemic hit pause on our dumpling-making traditions. Alone at home, I signed up for a Cantonese language learning app. To stave off lockdown boredom, I churned out massive batches of my mom’s pork-and-chive dumplings. I probably used too much garlic for my mom’s liking; my sister would have chosen cabbage over chives—but the recipe became distinctly my own.

In the wake of anti-Asian hate incidents and the Atlanta spa shootings in March 2021, I attempted to make use of my grief and folded over 500 dumplings to raise funds for Chinatown community groups and mutual aid organizations.

At first I was making variations on a classic Cantonese flavour profile (ginger, garlic, soy), but I considered the universality of the potsticker and what made it comforting: meaty, fatty and enrobed in pan-fried carbs. Though the taste and execution may differ, it had plenty in common with a Happy Meal. Why limit myself to tradition? So again, I came up with another version of my own.

Thus was born the cheeseburger dumpling, stuffed with ground beef, chopped onion, the high-and-low marriage of aged cheddar and Kraft Singles slices, dijon, mayo and splashes of soy sauce and rice cooking wine in a nod to its origins.

It’s a little junky but decadent, just like a burger. Cut the richness with a piece of kimchi or a dash of vinegary hot sauce, or lean into the theme and pair it with a homemade Big Mac sauce.

It's a nostalgic-but-novel homage to my childhood McDonald’s treats, and to memories of watching my mom’s nimble fingers as they deftly stuffed each morsel at the kitchen table. It’s neither Cantonese nor Western, but something in-between. Dumpling recipes are less a prescribed set of instructions than guidelines that start as someone else’s creation and become your own.

Food is the line that connects me to my kin, and I can shorten that distance with every pleat and fold.

Canice Leung’s Cheeseburger Dumplings Recipe