Mandu (dumpling)

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Mandu
Korean-style fried mandu.
Korean name
Hangul:	만두
Hanja:	饅頭
Revised Romanization:	mandu
McCune-Reischauer:	mandu

Mandu are dumplings in Korean cuisine. They are similar to what are called pelmeni and pierogi in some Slavic cultures and may have had influenced the development of European, especially Italian dumplings. In the Mongolian cuisine, dumplings are called bansh (steamed), buuz (boiled), or khuushuur (deep fried). Pyongyang is famous for its mandu.

The name is cognate with mantou or mandou in Japanese, Vietnamese, Hmong, Taiwanese and Chinese cuisines, which refers to steamed buns with or without fillings.

In Korean cuisine, mandu denotes a type of filled dumplings similar to the Turkish mantı, the Chinese jiaozi, and the Japanese gyoza. If the dumplings are fried, they are called gunmandu (군만두), which literally means roasted mandu.

It is likely that the name originated in a wheat-growing Central Asian culture in the medieval period, which had extensive trade and cultural interactions with China and nomads of the Eurasian steppe^{[citation needed]}. However, the Chinese claim that the name mantou, as a combination of man (southern Chinese barbarians, usually of the Mien-Hmong group) and tou (head) originated in the time of the Three Kingdoms Period when the Shu military leader Zhuge Liang reformed the custom of human sacrifice by substituting heads of captives for so-named and imitatively kneaded steamed breads.