Wonton Soup (餛飩湯)

No more MSG-loaded, tiny, overpriced bowls of Wonton soup at your local Chinese restaurant. You can easily make the soup in the comfort of your own kitchen. These step-by-step instructions should help you to that one very special, piping-hot bowl of Asian goodness. 加油!

 We start with your mixture, the inside "stuffing" of your wontons. You can make it meat heavy or vegetable heavy; in this case, this is a vegetable-heavy recipe and the bright green mixture can be prettily seen through the thin wonton skin in the finished bowl of soup.

Determine your own serving size/preference. Ground pork and minced frozen spinach combined with minced green onions equals the most perfect wonton mixture known to man. Stir in a teaspoon of salt.

Open your pack of wonton wrappers and fill a small bowl with water, which serves as "glue" when folding.

Place a dollop of mixture in the center -- not too much. Practice makes perfect.

Dabble a line of water on all four sides with your finger.

Next, fold one corner over to its opposite corner and squeeze shut so it creates a triangle shape.

It will look like this. Squeeze only the edges together, not flattening the entire wonton!

Next, bend the top corner down slightly. Wet the two bottom corners with water and bend them down.

Use a finger to push the center upwards to help you bend down the bottom corners.

Squeeze the two corners together, with the wet sides pressed together.

Such a pretty bonnet!

And repeat and repeat and repeat! Soon you'll have a whole army of bonnets or "money pockets" at your command.

Now, to prepare our soup base. Soy sauce and sesame oil are a must.

Mustard stems provide that distinctive and flavorful taste to your wonton soup. Mince them and mince a few more green onions.

In a bowl, add just a sprinkle of salt. All of these oils and sauces are salty enough. Add a dabble of soy sauce, minced stems, a drop of sesame oil (the flavor is very, very strong), and the green onions.

Then, boil a large pot of water. Ladle water into the bowl. 

There it is, your homemade wonton soup base and it smells so good.

Often times, vegetables are combined with wontons. 小白菜, or "baby bok choy" is used in this recipe, found in abundance and in many different varieties at your local Chinese supermarket. Any kind of "bok choy" would be perfect.

Looks like lettuce, but don't be fooled. Drop in boiling water and it will be cooked almost immediately. After literally 20-30 seconds, dole into the soup bowls. 

Time to cook the wontons. If you've laid them on a board, you'll have no trouble transporting them to the stove. If you've traditionally used paper, it'd be much easier to slide them onto a cardboard of some sort.

With the same pot of boiling water, drop the wontons in one by one. Stir the water to keep it moving so they don't stick to the bottom. 

They will be ready when they all begin to float on the surface. That pretty green mixture will be visible through the cooked skins.

Ladle into your soup bowls, and you have completed the not-so-daunting task! Smells just like the Chinese restaurant.

All finished!

Enjoy~!