How do you define a dumpling? At its simplest, it's a little pocket of dough filled with some kind of savory or sweet stuffing.
And simple ideas are, without a doubt, the best, which is why dumplings are a beloved food all over the world: humble yet elaborate, local yet global, endlessly adapted but still firmly rooted in their home regions as a cheap, delicious snack.
Here are no fewer than 35 of our favorite kinds of dumplings from around the globe, sure to fire up your taste buds.
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Xiao Long Bao
Steamed in bamboo baskets, xiao long bao look different from other kinds of Chinese dumplings, since the wrapper is gathered and pinched at the top rather than folded in half.
Xiao long bao are also unique in that, alongside the traditional pork filling, a small piece of jelly is added to the dumpling, which melts as it steams.
Thanks to that broth, the filling stays juicy and full of flavor.
Ravioli
Italy is, of course, the world's home of stuffed pasta, and ravioli is one of its most famous offerings, so famous that it has been exported all over the world.
Ravioli, like other Italian stuffed pastas, can be filled with just about anything, from meat to cheese to vegetables, or any combination of the above.
If the processed canned or packaged versions familiar to lazy college students are your only impression of ravioli, fix that as soon as possible. Preferably with a trip to Rome.
Sichuan Spicy Wontons
Spicy Sichuan wontons, or chao shou, arrive at the table drenched in a fiery chili oil seasoned with Sichuan peppercorns and a black vinegar sauce.
Chao shou are boiled, and the best specimens are so slippery they're nearly impossible to pick up with chopsticks.
The combination of savory meat, silky wonton wrapper, and a tongue-numbing sauce adds up to the most pleasant runny nose you'll ever have.
Manti
Manti hail from Central Asia (they're eaten in places like Turkey, northwestern China, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan) and are very closely related to East Asian dumpling variants.
Adopted by Turkic peoples who traveled across Central Asia during the Mongol Empire, these dumplings can be filled with lamb, beef, quail, or chicken, or left unfilled altogether.
Turkish manti are served with yogurt and seasoned with red pepper and melted butter.
Bryndzové Halušky
Slovakia's national dish, bryndzové halušky is a plate of potato dumplings served with bryndza, a Slovak sheep's cheese, and topped with bacon or pork fat.
Siomay
Steamed fish dumplings served with vegetables and peanut sauce, siomay can be thought of as an Indonesian street-food take on shumai, traditionally found in Cantonese dim sum restaurants.
Borrowed from Chinese Indonesian cuisine, the most popular version of siomay can be found in Bandung. The best way to try these dumplings is to buy them from a street vendor carting a steamer around on his bicycle.
Shrimp Wontons
The Hong Kong-style shrimp wonton is a plump dumpling filled with shrimp and minced pork. It's usually served with thin egg noodles or on its own in a seafood broth.
Plenty of heated debate over the best shrimp wontons can be overheard at the local level, but there's never any argument about their central place in the Hong Kong diet.
Pierogi
Originating in Central and Eastern Europe, pierogi are most often thought of as Polish.
These dumplings can be stuffed with potato, minced meat, cheese, fruit, or sauerkraut. They're typically boiled and then pan-fried in butter with onions.
That final detail is the highlight of the dish, adding yet another layer of flavor.
Modak
Modak is a sweet from Maharashtra, offered to Lord Ganesha during Ganesh Chaturthi, the festival dedicated to him each year between August and September.
The teardrop-shaped dumpling is kneaded from rice flour and filled with coconut and jaggery, an unrefined cane sugar.
Dushbara
These Azerbaijani dumplings are filled with lamb or beef and usually served in a broth.
Like the most intricate Italian pasta dumplings, they're folded by hand, a process made all the trickier by their tiny size. A vinegar-garlic sauce adds an extra kick.
Kartoffelknödel
Found all across Germany, kartoffelknödel, or potato dumplings, typically accompany meat dishes.
The Bavarian version combines both raw and cooked potato, with a filling of croutons or bread.
Coxinha
This is a popular street food in Brazil: essentially chicken dumplings, made from fried dough with shredded chicken inside.
They're shaped like a teardrop, supposedly to resemble a chicken thigh, since the dish was originally made with thigh meat. Some cooks add potato to the dough before frying for an extra hit of carbs.
Pelmeni
Pelmeni are Russian dumplings from Siberia, likely introduced into Russian cuisine by the Mongols.
Similar to Chinese jiaozi, Turkish manti, and Eastern European varenyky, pelmeni stand out for the thinness of their wrapper.
Pelmeni can be filled with anything from meat to mushrooms to cheese, but never with anything sweet.
Dim Sim
Some dumpling purists say the Australian dim sim is nothing more than a bastardized version of Chinese dumplings.
But we say, if a dumpling draws a line of fans, then it's a worthy dumpling.
A dim sim is a mix of meat or fish combined with cabbage and wrapped in a casing. It can be steamed, deep-fried, or grilled, and is usually much larger than a Chinese dumpling.
Dim sims typically taste of ginger, a hallmark of the Westernized Chinese cuisine found in Australia, North America, and Europe.
Brik
The word "brik" is thought to come from Turkish, but it's a purely Tunisian dumpling, a fried triangle of wonderfulness, often with an egg inside for an extra gooey bite. It can be filled with tuna, harissa, and parsley, or with anything from capers to cheese to meat.
Banh Bot Loc
Banh bot loc are Vietnamese dumplings made with pork and shrimp, wrapped in a tapioca-flour casing.
When cooked, the tapioca flour turns translucent, giving the dumpling its appearance and lending the casing a chewy texture.
There are two main versions: wrapped in banana leaves and steamed, or boiled.
Empanada
If you've ever been to Argentina (or its neighboring Latin American countries), you've almost certainly eaten an empanada: dough stuffed with meat, fish, or other fillings, then baked or fried.
In Argentina, the traditional fillings depend on where you are; in Mendoza, for example, olives are often added to the mix. Usually, though, you'll have a choice of meat, with chicken and beef being the classics.
Tangyuan
Tangyuan is a Chinese dessert: sticky balls of glutinous rice flour holding a sweet filling, such as ground peanuts or black sesame paste, served in a bowl of sweet soup or rolled in ground peanuts.
Some tangyuan are served as smaller, unfilled rice balls in a cane-sugar soup.
At dessert-shop chains all across Hong Kong, tangyuan are served with ice cream and finished with a drizzle of syrup.
Chicken and Dumplings
Chicken and dumplings is arguably the ultimate Southern comfort food in the United States.
Chicken soup is a dish found all over the world, but adding dumplings gives the soup something special.
American dumplings are usually a mix of flour, shortening, and milk, dropped straight into the chicken broth in this case. The broth can be a clear chicken soup or thickened with flour or cream.
Kimchi Mandu
Mandu, the Korean version of the dumpling, is more closely related to the manti found in Central Asian cuisine than to Chinese or Japanese dumplings.
Mandu are often folded into round shapes, a technique rarely seen in Chinese cooking.
Given how ubiquitous kimchi is in Korea, it was probably inevitable that somewhere along the way someone would chop up kimchi and tuck it into a dumpling.
Canederli
When winter nights draw in and the temperature drops, what could be better than a golf-ball-sized dumpling made from bread and stuffed with things like speck (a type of cured ham), cheese, and onion, washed down with a beer?
Italians flock to Alto Adige, an autonomous region in the north of the country that was part of Austrian Tyrol before joining Italy under Fascism, for these traditional Tyrolean dumplings. Eat them in broth or order a whole plate (some restaurants do canederli "flights" with different fillings). Just bear in mind, they're enormous, and you'll probably find your eyes are much bigger than your stomach.
Ba-wan
Ba-wan is a Taiwanese street snack, often found at night markets across the island.
A translucent shell, made from rice flour, cornstarch, and sweet potato starch, holds a filling of pork, bamboo shoots, and mushrooms. Ba-wan is served with a sweet-and-savory sauce.
The dumplings are first steamed and then deep-fried so the shell doesn't dry out.
Momo
Momo are dumplings found in northern Indian, Nepalese, and Tibetan cuisine. They can be filled with meat, vegetables, or cheese and are usually served with a tomato-based dipping sauce.
Enterprising Nepalese vendors in Kathmandu have also started filling momo with Snickers and Mars bars, especially in areas frequented by tourists.
Uszka
Uszka are similar to Polish pierogi, and the word "uszka" means "little ears" in Polish. They're usually filled with minced meat and mushrooms and dropped into borscht.
Uszka filled with porcini mushrooms and minced onion, without meat, are served in a clear borscht on Christmas Eve in Poland.
Gyoza
Related to Chinese dumplings, Japanese gyoza are usually made with a thinner wrapper and filled with minced pork.
Frozen gyoza can be found in most grocery stores around the world, but the best gyoza restaurants always turn out to be tiny spots tucked near Tokyo's subway stations.
Crab Rangoon
Found on Chinese takeout menus in the US, crab rangoon are dumplings that are deep-fried and served as a side.
They're filled with cream cheese and imitation crab meat made from fish paste.
It may not be an authentic Chinese dish, but a love of fried cheese crosses cultures.
Teochew Fun Gor
Not your typical pork dumpling, teochew fun gor is usually filled with peanuts, chives, dried shrimp, pork, radish, mushrooms, and cilantro.
The shell is made from a combination of wheat flour, tapioca flour, cornstarch, and potato starch, which gives fun gor its semi-translucent look.
Teochew fun gor is most popular in Cantonese dim sum restaurants.
Samosa
Usually triangular in shape, samosas are a fried snack popular across South and Southeast Asia.
They can be filled with a range of ingredients, including potato, onion, peas, lentils, and ground lamb.
Khinkali
Straddling Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia, it's no surprise that Georgia has its own dumplings.
Khinkali resemble xiao long bao. They're formed by gathering the folds of the wrapper at the top and are filled with spiced beef and pork.
Khinkali are usually served with coarsely ground black pepper.
Gnocchi
Gnocchi are small, thick pasta shapes that can be made from semolina, potato, flour, eggs, cheese, or a combination of all of these. They originated in northern Italy, though today they're eaten all over the country, with recipes varying from region to region.
Gnocchi are cooked like other pasta dishes and can be served with tomato-based sauces, pesto, or any other sauce you might find on pasta.
Daifuku
Duty-free shops in Japanese airports are packed with what look like mountains of pre-packaged boxes of Japanese treats. Many of these boxes actually contain daifuku.
It's a type of mochi (glutinous rice cakes), except these are filled, usually with sticky-sweet red adzuki bean.
Daifuku are popular as gifts in Japan, and specialty shops creating a stunning variety of types sell countless boxes during the holiday seasons.
Amish Apple Dumpling
The apple dumpling is popular throughout the United States and widespread among the Amish, especially in and around Pennsylvania.
A peeled and cored apple is filled with cinnamon and sugar, then wrapped in a piece of dough and baked until the apple turns soft. Pairing an apple dumpling, fresh from the oven, with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top makes for a heavenly dessert.
Ravioli del Plin
Of course, every region of Italy makes its own stuffed pasta, but these, from southern Piedmont, are especially prized. They're much smaller than regular ravioli (barely bigger than Bolognese tortellini) and are filled either with a meat mixture (which often includes rabbit) and served with a glaze of meat sauce, or with a vegetable mixture, frequently cabbage with rice.
Besides their small size, the pasta is also rolled very thin, so the dumplings seem to melt in your mouth. "Plin" isn't a place they come from; the word derives from the local dialect word for "to pinch," since the pockets are pinched shut by hand.
Shish Barak
This is the ultimate Lebanese comfort food: lamb dumplings, similar to manti, served drenched in yogurt, usually goat's rather than cow's, to give the flavor more richness.
The lamb is mixed with pine nuts and spices before being wrapped in dough, then slowly cooked in yogurt with water. It's a labor-intensive process, requiring constant stirring to keep the consistency right.
Ashak
These vegetarian dumplings hail from Afghanistan and are also similar to manti. Recipes vary, but the main component is some kind of green vegetable inside, whether green onion, shallot, or celery, as they make it at the Orient Experience restaurant in Venice, run by refugees.
Ashak are usually served with a lentil sauce and yogurt.
