Homemade Pork Wontons

Ahhh, weekends. They’re good for the soul!

So too, is having the time to cook with love. I know, people say that all the time, made with love.  Sometimes I believe it’s true – other times I believe people love a bandwagon.  Either way, what is it then, when food you’ve made so delicately with such care and patience, gets shoved into someones mouth and gobbled up in 2 seconds flat? Disheartening.  And it happened to me on Friday night.

To be fair, dinner took longer than expected (you can’t rush love) so when I placed everything down in front of the hubs and he hungrily stabbed one of my little wontons babies, right in the centre it was like he took a knife to my own heart. Okay, that’s a bit very dramatic, but there’s a point.

This meal. Make it. Eat it. Enjoy it. But don’t rush it! The making or the eating. Don’t let your husband stab it to death.

I winged this without a recipe, so unless you’re comfortable following my guestimations, maybe suss out another recipe for the dipping sauce. The wontons will be delish either way, the dipping sauce took tasting and tweaking, and tasting and tweaking until I was happy with it.

The gist is, pork nom noms – I mean, wontons, 2 ways with an Asian dipping sauce. It’s pretty simple, but definitely time consuming, you need to work fast to prevent your wonton wrappers drying out, so with that in mind, make whatever you’re pairing your wontons with, first. You want to be able to wrap the wontons and cook them with no delay. I opted for a simple cabbage salad, and Chinese dipping sauce.

The salad is straightforward… 

Into a bowl mix some shredded savoy cabbage, slightly less shredded red cabbage, a julienned carrot, and two finely sliced green onions. Done. Set aside.

The sauce is well, a bit vague sorry… 

I added roughly the following amounts to a small saucepan and gently warmed until the sugar dissolved. (like I said, I think these are the amounts) – 1/4 cup soy sauce, 2 tbs oyster sauce, 4 tbs rice wine vinegar, 3 tbs sugar, 1 tsp sesame oil.

Now make your wontons… :)

The filling is as simple as mixing together 500g pork mince, some sliced green onions (3?), a splash of soy sauce (2 tbs?), a couple of drops of sesame oil, an egg, and some salt and pepper. Mix until combined. I timed myself making four of these and the clock stopped at 2:46mins. I must have gotten faster though as 25 took me about 30mins all up.

Prepping a few at a time speeds it up.

Dip your finger in a little water

and run around all edges

press tighly into a triangle

fold one corner over your finger and dap a touch of water on the top

pull the other corner around and squeeze together tighly

You now have a wonton!

I made a few others by just bunching the wrapper together

place them on a lightly oiled tray and cover with a damp cloth to prevent drying out.

Hot tips – don’t overfill your wontons. I know, I know, it’s tempting, the bigger the better? No! They won’t seal properly, will fill with water and you’ll have floaty central in your saucepan.

To boil…

Delicately place in boiling water and boil until they float, and then for a further 2 mins. Drain on paper towel and serve immediately!

To … actually, never mind. 

I wanted the crispy but not totally fried version. I saw a quick recipe which said to fry quickly on both sides, and then add water to the pan and then cover, so they steam. Pffft. I can’t for the life of me find that ‘recipe’ now, and I also don’t know why the heck I didn’t stop and think about what I was doing before I went ahead and followed suit. Surely, steaming or even par boiling and THEN frying would make more sense? I ended up with soggy, but brown little parcels. Sure they tasted yummy in the end, but they weren’t what I was after.

Wrapping up… 

Serve your dipping sauce in a little dish and add some sliced green onions (in hindsight, the sauce should definitely have ginger in it too, but I didn’t think of it at the time. Oh well, still yummy!)

Use a little dipping sauce as dressing tossed through your salad. DONE!

And don’t let your husband stab to death the little beauties you just spent forever giving life to.  I seriously had to say please don’t be so rough with them, it’s hurting me to watch you. We ended up blaming the hardware (yet again) and switched his chopsticks for a better, thinner pair.

The little bowl of left over mince is just that. The tiny amount of mince I had left from 500gm.