20 Minutes with: Vicky Ha, House of Dumplings

The NZ Artisan Awards is back again for 2021, we sat down with Vicky Ha from House of Dumplings to gain a bit of insight into how her delicious dumplings were crowned the Frozen Category winner in the NZ Artisan Awards last year.

Vicky Ha, the Queen of Dumplings, was vegan when she was in University. Most products then were soy and/or tofu-based - she quickly became tired of the selection and needed a solution.

"Being a chef, I love using natural ingredients. So I decided to create a range of plant-based dumplings using amazingly tasty natural ingredients and flavour them with spices and fresh herbs. We also pair each plant-based dumplings with a matching vegetable pastry that compliment the flavour profile."

For example, they use an earthy beetroot pastry to pair with a luxurious version of dahl and add nutritious kale into it.

Pairing six different types of mushroom with a 20-month organic miso and pairing the flavour with tomato pastry. Basically an umami flavour bomb.

Ha stated that entering House of Dumplings into the NZ Artisan Awards last year was "simple, easy and straight forward". She highly recommends others to enter the Awards.

"Although none of us create food to enter the Awards, it is nice to get people to experience and recognise the flavour profile we want to create."

Ha uses the Artisan Awards stickers on all her products that head into the supermarkets to showcase her well-deserved win, and also to indicate to new customers that her product is definitely worth a taste.

For those who are wanting to enter this year...