Wonton Soup

This soup sparks my memory as a kid, going and getting Chinese takeout from the small hole in a wall place in my hometown. A small side of soup commonly came with my meal and I always chose wonton! Enjoying the dish, I was so distant from it’s rich history. What a lot of Americans don’t know is the common “Chinese take out” we know originated from the Cantonese people in southeastern China. Wonton soup is a traditional dish dating back to the early 1600s in the Qing dynasty. Can you believe a 10yr old American country boy was enjoying a dish with that rich of a culture? It’s quite ironic, but I’m so happy I grew up to appreciate cuisine from different cultures. 

One more history lesson that I think is important here: the origin of the dumpling. Over 2,000 years, the event occurred when Zhang Zhongjian returned to his ancestral village during the winter, after a long absence. He noticed that many of his fellow citizens were suffering from frostbite, particularly around their ears. As a way to solve this problem, Zhang cooked up a batch of mutton, chili and healing herbs and wrapped them in scraps of dough. He folded the dumplings to look like little ears, boiled them and handed them out to his afflicted neighbors. Who knows if they cured frostbite, but the villagers loved the taste of Zhang’s creation so much that they kept making the dumplings long after spring began. (History .com) 

So now that you know the historical importance of this dish, let’s get into it: to begin you will need to start the broth. 

Broth ingredients: 

2 quarts chicken stock 3 cups water 4 quarter inch slices of ginger 3 garlic cloves whole 2 spring onions cut in half1 cube of chicken bouillon 
- combine all broth ingredients in medium pot, and bring to boil, then simmer for 30mins. This is a great broth that you can have alone if you’re feeling sick, and need something to warm you up, but it’s best with wontons! 
For Wonton ingredients: 
1 pack of wonton wrappers (you can easily find these pre made in the produce section in Walmart\publix) 
.25 pounds of raw shrimp with heads and tails removed 
1/2 pound ground pork 
2 tablespoons soy sauce 
2 tablespoons seasoned rice wine (sake, mirin, or shaoxing)
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon black or white pepper 
1 tablespoon raw sugar (half that if you have only white sugar) 
1 tablespoon corn starch 
1 tablespoon grated garlic
1 tablespoon grated ginger 
1 minced spring onion 

Directions: 
- take all shrimp and mince and chop until fully ground, then add in ground pork and the rest of the filling ingredients. Let sit and marinate for 15 mins. 
- after the 15mins, take out about 30 wonton wrappers. You will also need a little dish of water to seal the wrappers with. Each wrapper will be filled with about a teaspoon of filling (not a teaspoon you have in your drawer, the actual measurement). Then seal using this technique: 

Wet one half of wrapper and fold into a triangle
Then wet one of the bottom corners and pull them together! 
Wow look! You have an adorable wonton! 
After all of your wontons are wrapped, bring broth back up to boil, and remove all vegetable aromatics from pot. Then one by one carefully add your wontons and boil for 10 mins! Scoop up and enjoy! Optionally garnish the top with some fresh spring onion and parsley.