6 Minute English / Why we love dumplings

Note: This is not a word-for-word transcript.

Hello. This is 6 Minute English from BBC Learning English. I m Neil.

And I m Beth.

In China they re crescent shaped and filled with pork and cabbage, in Nepal they re called momos and are fried with buffalo meat. In Ireland they re soaked in Guinness gravy, and Italians fill them with spinach and call them gnocchi. They can be steamed or fried and are found all over the world. I m talking, of course, about dumplings.

Dumplings are a group of dishes where a filling is wrapped inside pieces of cooked dough. They re basically dough envelopes with a filling inside. Fillings can be anything from meat and fish to vegetables, tofu or cheese. And the dough is usually based on a starchy grain like wheat, rice, corn or potato. In fact, the English word, dumpling , comes from a 17th century adjective, dump, meaning dough-like .

The really amazing thing about dumplings is that they re found all over the world. Over the centuries, different countries and regions have experimented with flavours and fillings to create something unique. Wherever in the world you are there s probably a special kind of dumpling for you!

In this programme, we ll be sampling a dumpling from the West African country of Ghana. And, as usual, we ll be learning some useful new vocabulary as well.

Great! But first I have a question for you, Beth. Probably the most famous British dumplings, suet dumplings, are cooked on top of a chicken or beef stew. They re made from suet but what exactly is that? Is suet:

a) wheat?b) potato? or,c) animal fat?

Hmmm, I think suet is made from animal fat.