wanton wonton

I say "beat your meat" in this one click to see more

I’m going to be honest, I didn’t know what a wonton was until a few weeks ago.

1. wanton [adj] — (of a cruel or violent action) deliberate and unprovoked

2. wanton [n] — a sexually unrestrained woman

3. wonton [n] — (in Chinese cooking) a small round dumpling or roll with a savory filling, usually eaten boiled in soup

A wanton wanton ate wontons. Does it work?

Growing up in a community that had very few legit Chinese establishments, my only experience with a wonton was the deep-fried crispy ones that had cream cheese injected into it.

But recently, the algorithm gods saw fit to put wantons in every single post I saw on social media, and thus made it my mission to make wontons.

A wonton is basically a dumpling. The only difference I could really find is that sometimes dumplings don’t need fillings, while all wontons have some sort of filling that is encased by the wheat flour dough. Okay.

wonton skins I found at my local Asian grocery store

Whether we’re talking about dumplings, wontons, potstickers, or gyoza, there are differences in their underlying cultures and preparations, but one thing remains the same — stuff it with stuff and cook it.

This is a total beginner’s guide to making wontons from a total beginner.

Here are 4 reasons why these are so damn good to make:

• They’re super fast. Once you have everything ready to go, it’s just a matter of wrapping them up. Freeze a bunch for later that you can cook in minutes for an easy snack.

• Really easy. It’s kind of intimidating seeing masters wrap them at warp speeds, but I pretty much got it by my third one. You can too.

• Versatile. You can fill them with whatever you got. I didn’t even go out to get more ingredients except for the wrappers. Fill with protein or just keep ‘em veggie-friendly. Also good on their own or fantastic when thrown into a bowl of noodle soup.

• Social. Probably the most time-consuming part (wrapping) is also the most fun and social part. So do it with friends. Unless you don’t have friends, in which case do them by yourself and cry.

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Beginner Wontons (By a Beginner)

not bad for a first try

Ingredients

• Wanton wrappers

• ~500 grams of ground meat of some kind

  • (I used beef. Pork, shrimp, chicken, even mushrooms or just veggies is fine)

• ~2 cloves of garlic, grated

• ~3 spring onions, chopped

• ~1 little knob of ginger, grated

• ~1/2 tbsp. soy sauce

• ~1/2 tbsp. oyster sauce

• ~1/2 tbsp. rice vinegar

• ~1/2 tsp. sesame oil

• ~1 tsp. sugar

• S + P to taste

Do you see all of the ~’s? That means I was just chucking in what I felt was necessary.

For Sauce

• Soy sauce

• Chili Oil

• Rice Vinegar

Directions

1. Dump your choice of ground meat into a big mixing bowl. I had leftover ground beef so I used that. Chop all of the veggies finely, including the spring onion, garlic, ginger, and whatever else you’re using. Drop it all in the big mixing bowl.

2. Add your sauces and seasonings. Everything.

3. Time to get mixing. Like really really mixing. Check the tips below that I didn’t really follow my first time around.

4. Now for the fun part. Get one wonton wrapper in the palm of your off-hand, then scoop about a tablespoon of your mixture into the middle of the wrapper. Don’t put too much, it’ll just be a headache.

5. Once you have it neatly in the middle, put a finger in some water and wet each of the edges/sides of the wonton.

6. Fold opposite ends to make a triangle, then pinch out the air and seal the other edges shut. Then take the bottom two ends and wrap them to “hold” each other. It’s described here as the second way: the diamond. But there are several different ways to do it that lend themselves better to different methods of eating. Here’s a vid:

You can see it makes a cute little butthole with legs wrapped around it

7. Rinse and repeat until you use up all the meat. At this point, I froze all the extras so that they were ready to go whenever I wanted.

8. Boil some water and drop them in. They cook pretty quickly, like a couple of minutes. You don’t need to time them, just wait for them to float to the surface and they’re ready to go.

9. As you’re boiling, let’s put together a little sauce. Add equal parts of soy sauce, rice vinegar, and chili oil into a bowl. As you can see in the pic, I put it at the bottom of the serving bowl so it would look sexy as hell. (Jihyun was mad because she didn’t want them that saucy.)

10. Devour.

Extra Tips

• Get that filling extra tender. For next-level wontons, you want the filling to be super tender. To do this, really mix the filling well — in one direction. Like swirl your hand in the bowl clockwise (or counter-clockwise) until you start seeing streaks in the meat. This means the proteins are starting to bind together. Simply put = more tender.

• Beat your meat (haha). Pick up your ball of meat and slam it back down into the bowl. Same benefits as the last point.

• Taste test. If you want to know what your filling tastes like before you go through all of the work of wrapping them up, just take a piece and cook it on the stove to see how it tastes and re-season as necessary.

• Just throw them in soups. The next day, I made a pretty simple noodle soup and just dropped the wontons in. Huge upgrade with minimal effort.