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Convenience store Mini Stop’s new Gyoza Dog is must-try for all Gyoza fans! 【Taste test】

Dale Roll Oct 16, 2020
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With all the flavors of a pot sticker in the perfect portion size, you can’t go wrong with the Gyoza Dog!

When you’re on your way somewhere and you’re feeling a little peckish, one of the best places to stop for a quick snack, hot or cold, is a convenience store. Since they’re just about on every corner and in every nook and cranny, they, of course, can’t be beat in terms of convenience, but their food is actually really good, too. Just ask this YouTuber who tried everything at the 7-Eleven counter!

That’s why we were popping by a Mini Stop the other day; we wanted a snack, and boy did we find one. It turns out that Mini Stop is now selling a delightfully original hot food concoction: the Gyoza Dog.

Gyoza, as you may know, is the Japanese word for pot stickers or Chinese dumplings. Typically made up of pork, garlic, garlic chives, and your desired spices and vegetables, all stuffed into a little wrapper that folds together, gyoza are a popular side dish and cheap comfort food for many Japanese people.

But to make it into a hot dog? Well, of course we had to try it. It costs just 185 yen (US$1.75), so we snatched one up and brought it home for one of our highly professional taste tests.

First, it’s any proper journalist’s duty to scrutinize the product before consuming it, so we gazed upon it in its little baggie for a long moment, enjoying the mystery of it. Though it’s called a “Gyoza Dog”, it is less cylindrical than a hot dog, and quite long and thick. It looked more like an oversized gyoza than anything else.

Intrigued, we pulled it from its bag, and…

Its actual appearance is…rather hard to describe. Well, it did indeed have the appearance of gyoza. They seemed to have made an effort to make the little folds on the top, as if they pinched the wrapper by hand. It even had the same silky-looking quality that regular gyoza wrappers have, so it seemed legit.

The stuffing was what had us the most curious. Mini Stop boasts that their new Gyoza Dog is stuffed to the brim with cabbage, garlic chives, and ginger, and promises a bold and satisfying flavor. But this is a cruel world that is full of lies, so we had to cut it open to verify what the insides were like before biting into it.

The outside was kind of soft and hard to cut, but we managed to cut it cleanly in two.

Oh, hello there, gyoza filling! To our great pleasure, the Gyoza Dog was packed full of delicious-looking meat and veggies.

Even better, the ends of the dog were stuffed, too. None of that nonsense where only the middle gives you a good bite, and at the end you only get a mouthful of dry dough.

Salivating, we took a nice bite out of the center. It was very much like a nikuman meat bun in texture, with its soft, doughy exterior and warm, meaty interior, but at the same time, it tasted like a gyoza. Very mysterious, but very tasty. The size was perfect, too: neither too big nor too small. This would make a great snack when you need a bite to eat but don’t have time for a full meal!

Some people might be concerned about the pungent gyoza smell–since gyoza are typically made with a lot of garlic–but you needn’t worry about that with the Gyoza Dog, because it doesn’t contain any garlic. It does contain garlic chives, but these weren’t that strong in taste or aroma, so we reckon this would be a safe snack to eat on the train or in the office. If you like gyoza, you’ll definitely want to give it a try!

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[ Read in Japanese ]