For my frozen dumpling reviews I have decided to adopt a star rating system with dumplings rated on a zero to five scale.  Within this rubric the first frozen dumpling I profiled, Whole Foods’ vegetable dumpling, got zero stars.

Day Lee Pride, Frozen Vegetable Dumplings.  Rating: 

Day Lee Foods, the maker of Day Lee Pride gyoza, is subsidiary of Japan’s largest meat supplier, Nippon Meat Packers, Inc, and claims to be one of the first companies to market mass produced frozen dumplings for home consumption.  They make frozen vegetable, pork, chicken, beef and shrimp gyoza; here I review the vegetable gyoza.

I pan fried and then steamed them as directed on the back of the bag.  The vegetable filling maintained a decent crunch and wasn’t mushy, but overall I found these dumplings had a fairly bitter cabbage flavor.  The wrapper is fairly delicate and pan fries and steams up quite well.  Eggs are not listed on the ingredient list for the wrappers, so they are actually vegan. There is also no added MSG or autolyzed yeast yeast extract, which is food manufactures favorite stealth way to add MSG to processed food without listing it among the ingredients.

I give these dumplings – 2.5 stars.