Chinese Wontons

Yes, these are the authentic Chinese wontons. Nope, they are not the fried tortilla strips in a bag you get from a fast food chain restaurant. And guess what, they are super easy to make, you should try it too!

Ingredients:

1 lb ground pork (you can use super lean, lean, regular, any type you like)

1 inch worth of ginger root, don’t worry about peeling, freeze ahead of time if you can

2 green onions, green part and white part

2 eggs

salt, pepper and chicken bullion powder to taste

1 package of store bought wonton wrappers (I like super thin type, it will say on the packaging, can be found in refrigerated area or frozen area, better yet, check out your local Asian market!)

You will also need a large clean surface to store the wontons. I normally use my cutting board, baking sheet or pizza pan. And I normally make a large quantity, so I choose the pans that fit my freezer. I freeze my wontons on the pans over night, and bag them the next day for a quick and easy wonton meal any time.

How to make wontons:

Take out the frozen wonton wrappers from the freezer, leave them in the packaging, on the counter to defrost, or leave them in the fridge over night to defrost. Do not microwave or heat it up, the wrappers will stick together and you might as well make meatball soup instead.

Dump all ingredients into a mixing bowl, doesn’t matter the sequence, just dump them all in. Please don’t mind my not so clean bowl in the picture, I only remembered to take pictures after I ran out of fillings, so the picture was second batch fillings.

Use a spoon, a fork or a pair of chopsticks (if you feel extra Asian today), mix the filling mixture vigorously in either clockwise or counter-clockwise direction for a good 5 minutes. This is the workout session for me for the day. Normally I would be able to feel the upper body muscles that I didn’t know I had. Take breaks if you need to, I certainly took a bunch breaks. Use a standup mixture if you have one, especially if you are making a large portion of wontons. One thing to keep in mind, when mixing the filling, keep it in one direction. This one directional thing is quite serious, if you ask people selling wontons in my hometown farmer’s market. They say it helps the filling to be soft and it will melt in your mouth.

This is the time to take the wrappers out of the packaging. Use your thumb and index finger to grab the entire stack of wrappers in the middle, shake it to loosen up the stack of wrappers over the sink, you will have some loose flour falling off, that’s fine. Notice in the picture below, I have the stack of wrappers fanned out all pretty on the cutting board. This is easy to do, and it helps when you need to grab one wrapper at a time, because most wrappers would be offset a tiny bit and already separated, but not exposed with a large surface to dry out. What I did was after shaking the stack, I put them on the cutting board, firmly pressing down the stack with the palm of my hand and turned my hand clockwise. You can use either hand, turn either direction. It may take a bit practice to feel the right pressure to apply. If too firm, you can press the wrappers together more, and they won’t fan out, if not firm enough, only the top layer of wrappers will fan out. Another essential for wonton making, a glass of your favorite drink. I got one there shown in the picture too!

Making the wonton is actually quite easy, probably a lot easier than you think. There are multiple ways of making wontons. I do not mean any method is better than others, but I am showing you how wontons are made in my home town. They look like sailor hats.

Grab a wrapper and lay in one hand, grab roughly 1/2 tbsp of filling and put in the center of wrapper. Fold wrapper over towards yourself, offset a bit, so it’s not a perfect rectangle, it will make the wonton look prettier in the end. Dab some water at one corner on the fold, lift middle finger up a bit and push the “meatball center” up a tiny bit, bring the 2 corners on the fold together, with the corner with water on the bottom, pinch the corners together, water will act like glue. Viola! Your first wonton is done! Now based on how your wonton turned out, you can adjust filling portion, add a bit more water on the corner or put on less.

Here is a video of how I made my wontons.

Common things to adjust:

Filling portion. Always start with less filling, you really can’t mess up with tiny bit of filling. It’s a good practice. Worst case, you can consider your first ever wonton a cross between flat noodle and wontons. There really is no right or wrong on the filling portion.

Wonton wrapper cracks, this is because the wrappers are dried out. The cracked wrapper you might as well toss it out, not much you could do to fix that. But the rest of the wrappers, you can lay a damp piece of paper towel over the stack for a while, or keep it on until you need another wrapper. I work pretty fast, so I don’t do this. If you are practicing making wontons, you can do this to your wrapper stacks, so you are not under pressure and feel like you are on a timed cooking show.