One of the first cooking memories I have is making Wonton with my family. I think it was the origin of my ongoing search for more opportunities to build community around food. My mom would make a big bowl of the filling, and then we would all sit around the table wrapping up little pockets of meaty goodness. I’m ferociously competitive, so was laser-focused on adding more wonton to the platter than anyone else. But at the same time I loved the therapeutic repetitiveness that resulted in a beautiful arrangement of row after row of wonton. And when they were done, they were also one of my favorite things to eat!

Guessipe

• 1 package thin wonton wrappers

filling

• 1 lb ground pork
• 4 oz water chestnuts, finely chopped
• 3 Chinese mushrooms (soaked 1/2 hour in warm water), finely chopped
• 2 green onion, finely chopped
• 1 TBSP garlic, minced
• 1 TBSP ginger, minced
• 2 TBSP soy sauce
• 2 TBSP oyster sauce
• 3 TBSP rice wine
• 1 TBSP sesame oil
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1 TBSP corn starch

Mix all filling ingredients together. Feel free to do a bit of mix and match. If I don’t happen to have an ingredient like green onion or water chestnuts, I just leave it out. Sometimes I’m feeling a little spicy and add in a squirt of Sriracha. Sometimes I’m feeling sweet and throw in a TBSP of hoisin sauce.

Fold a forkful of the filling into each wrapper (I like my wonton meaty, so I stuff them as much as possible – this occasionally resulted in them bursting open, and always resulted in my grandpa admonishing me that if I was running a restaurant I’d go out of business). I won’t try to describe how to fold a wonton – it’s much easier for you to watch one of the multitude of YouTube videos available.

Keep doing that until you have a beautiful array of wonton. If you’re like me and squeeze as much meat as possible into every wrapper, you’ll use up all the filling and have some wrappers left over. Not to worry – they freeze well. If you look close, you’ll notice that there are two slightly different colored wrappers in the pic below. I was using up the remains of two different packages that I had frozen.

For soup: Boil a large pot of water. Drop in a dozen wonton at a time. Remove when they float to the top. Put some chicken broth in a bowl, then add the cooked wonton. Feel free to dress it up any way you want. Here I did green onions and tobiko.

You can also just eat the boiled wonton like a dumpling. Here I topped them with some ginger slivers and a mixture of soy sauce and garlic chili sauce.

Or fried wontons are a tasty treat. Heat up enough peanut oil to completely immerse the wontons. Test if the oil is hot enough by tearing off a little piece of wonton wrapper and dropping it in the oil – if it sizzles, you’re good to go. Drop wontons in one at a time until you’ve just got a little space between each. Occasionally roll them over with chopsticks to make sure they brown on all sides. Once they’re golden brown, remove them to a paper towel-lined plate, and try to wait a couple minutes before digging in so you don’t burn the roof of your mouth off!

Mix together your favorite Asian flavors for a variety of dipping sauces. Hoisin with Sriracha is a combo I like for fried wontons.