Wonton & Dimsum

Feel free to add or take away anything from this recipe.

Servings: approximately 140 dumplings

Preparation time: ~ 20-30 minutes for combing ingredients. Give yourself 2-3hrs for making large batches. The time depends on your experience with folding the wontons or dumplings

Cooking time: 10-15 minutes. Frozen wontons cook for about 4-5 minutes in boiled water

Ingredients

• Wonton wraps or dumpling wraps
  • Double Happiness Shanghai wrappers 454g (x2)
• Ground meat: about 2lb package (2x 1 lb packages)
• Vegetable of choice
• Ginger: 1/2 tsp ground ginger. Fresh minced slices as preferred
• White ground pepper: 1/2 tsp
• White large onion: 1 (optional)
• Onion powder: 1 tsp
• Soy sauce of choice: 2 tbsp
• Sesame oil: 2 tsp
• Salt: 2 tsp, can substitute with chicken broth powder
• Garlic: 2 tsp of ground powder or 4 large clove minced. Can add both
• Chinese cooking wine, rice wine or mirin: 2 tsp
• Coriander powder: 2 tsp (optional)
• Cornstarch: 1/2 tbsp with a little water to dissolve (this makes the meat juicier)

Ingredient ideas

Mince with chopper and squeeze extra liquid out for all ingredients

• Carrots: 2
• Cabbage
• Spinach: 1 bunch
• Onion: 1
• Chives
• Celery
• Any kinds of mushrooms
• Green onions: 1 bunch
• Shrimps
• Napa cabbage: about 8 large leaves or 10 smaller ones
• Chicken, turkey, pork, lamb, beef

Preparing the ingredients

1. Wash and dry all produces
2. Choose your desired vegetables. Mince and squeeze liquid out
3. Ground meat can go into large mixing bowl directly or if you want them to have a smooth texture, blend them 
4. Mix all ingredients together
5. For dumplings example:

Making the wontons, dumplings or some dim sum “shu mai”

• This website has great instructions on how to fold the wontons. Each wonton requires very little filling. About 3/4 tsp. Make a few samples to get a good feel.
• This website shows you how to fold dumplings.
• You can also make shumai with them but they will not taste like the authentic shumai flavor. To achieve that, you need to modify your recipe with some starch and egg. These will taste like the xiaolong bao…or xiaolong mai (lol)! It’s a fun dim sum to make with extra fillings and wrappers if you get bored of making the same thing. To make the shumai, you put a generous 1 tbsp of filling into the center of the wrap and squeeze it into a pouch by making a “C” with your thumb and index finger. You can also fold it like a box by adding water to all four corners of the wonton wrapper, pinch them together to make a square. Fold the tabs on the side inwards and secure them with some water. When you steam them, they look like the round ones! The boxes hold up their shape better after steaming, imo.

Making the soup broth

• Each serving is about 500ml but I give myself 750ml per serving as water will be reduced through evaporation
• Broth can be made with ready to use chicken broth, chicken concentrate, chicken broth powder or with boiled chicken breast. I use the chicken broth powder as instructed from the package adding a dash of cooking wine, a bit of sesame oil, and a dash of soy sauce. When you boil the wontons or dumplings, a lot of flavors will be extracted from there. If you can find freshly made scallop or egg noodles for wonton, use them as when you boil them, they add so much flavor to your broth! If you want to get all fancy, you can use an instantpot to make the broth with chicken breast and bones. For deeper flavors, add dried shiitake mushrooms, goji berries, dried scallops or dried shrimps. I find it tastes perfectly fine with the powder or bought broth!
• Use noodles of choice or eat your products noodles free. You can boil your made products for 10-12 minutes, remove them from the pot then boil noodles in the same broth if they’re 2-3 minutes long. If what you’re using takes longer, boil them separately so the noodles don’t soak up your soup. If that happens, add more water and repeat the flavoring steps. You can also steam the made products separately for 10 minutes, boil the noodles separately, then pour your broth over. If you use this method, you may not need 750ml. Always have more than less so your soup doesn’t go dry!
• Garnish with ground pepper, cilantro, and green onions
• Add any greens of choice to the side. In my case, I wanted to finish up the spinach in the fridge. You can use napa cabbage, gai lan, baby bok choy, broccoli, broccolini, etc. If your greens need to be cooked, you can cook them with your made products or steam them according to preference.

Storing

• They store well on parchment paper over a pan and in the freezer. Once frozen, transfer to a ziplock bag and use within three months for most fresh outcomes.