[00:00] These deep fried wontons are what I look&nbsp; for in a deep fried wonton.. A lot of&nbsp;&nbsp; recipes online for wontons they’ll often&nbsp; really focus on the filling of the thing,&nbsp;&nbsp; but for me, a great fried wonton is all about&nbsp; the wrapper. You see, the way I look at it,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[00:16] I think there’s three general categories of fried&nbsp; wontons out there, which I’ll call hefty doughy,&nbsp;&nbsp; airy wafery, and thin crispy. So if you’re&nbsp; used to takeout style wontons outside of China,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[00:28] generally those guys are hefty doughy. They’re&nbsp; thick so they can handle a whole good meatball’s&nbsp;&nbsp; worth of filling… but it’s so substantive that&nbsp; the wrapper can sometimes get either a little&nbsp;&nbsp; hard after extended frying or conversely end&nbsp; up a bit doughy. Then the other extreme is&nbsp;&nbsp;
[00:44] this sort that you can find in Guangdong that’re&nbsp; really smooth and wafer-y… very common these days&nbsp;&nbsp; in a restaurant setting, it’s not my personal&nbsp; favorite, and they get that way using pre-made&nbsp;&nbsp; spring roll wrappers. For my personal tastes,&nbsp; this one here is my goldilocks – it’s thin,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:03] so no meatball, but you’ve got this wonderfully&nbsp; crispy blistered skin that’s very dippable,&nbsp;&nbsp; very snackable, and also I gotta say, really&nbsp; quite excellent next to a bowl of good congee.
[01:18] So. To make our wrapper aesthetic ideal,&nbsp; we’ll first mix 100 grams of AP flour in&nbsp;&nbsp; with a quarter teaspoon of salt and an eighth&nbsp; teaspoon of sodium carbonate… the alkaline&nbsp;&nbsp; there to help the texture of the dough and get&nbsp; those wrapper bubbles when frying. Then to that,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:35] swirl in 50 grams of water, and just roughly&nbsp; knead that for about a minute or two until you&nbsp;&nbsp; get a proper ball… and then let that sit for&nbsp; at least 40 minutes to let the gluten develop. Then, after that time, to roll, we’ll be passing&nbsp; this all through a pasta maker – the super old&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:51] school way would be of course bouncing on a bamboo&nbsp; pole, but we don’t own a massive bamboo pole and&nbsp;&nbsp; this will definitely make our lives easier. What&nbsp; you’ll want to do is pass it through the widest&nbsp;&nbsp;
[02:04] setting of a pasta maker, fold it in half, and&nbsp; then pass it again… and again, repeating seven&nbsp;&nbsp; times in all. This step is basically the pole&nbsp; bouncing equivalent and will strengthen and&nbsp;&nbsp;
[02:16] homogenize our dough. Then, after that, roll it&nbsp; down through setting three to extend the dough,&nbsp;&nbsp; and then cut that dough in two. Then roll those&nbsp; two through the second smallest setting and&nbsp;&nbsp;
[02:28] if you wanted that hefty doughy wrapper you&nbsp; could stop here, at about this consistency…&nbsp;&nbsp; but for ours we’ll dust it thoroughly then with&nbsp; flour, and roll it again on the very thinnest.&nbsp;
[02:41] And with that sheet, now we can cut&nbsp; those up, into roughly 6 by 6, 7 by&nbsp;&nbsp; 7ish squares… and just like that, you’ve got&nbsp; yourself a whole bunch of wonton wrappers.
[02:53] Now, to fill those, we really won’t need to&nbsp; overthink this because again the meat here&nbsp;&nbsp; is just this tiny little pouch. So we’ll&nbsp; start off with 100 grams of ground pork,&nbsp;&nbsp; about 20% fat is ideal… then give that an&nbsp; additional hand chop with a knife or cleaver&nbsp;&nbsp;
[03:09] for about three minutes to get it into a bit&nbsp; of a smoother paste. Move it to a bowl, then to&nbsp;&nbsp; that toss in an 1/8 tsp each salt, sugar, chicken&nbsp; bouillon powder… a good sprinkle of white pepper,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[03:21] and a mix of a ½ tsp liaojiu aka Shaoxing wine&nbsp; and cornstarch. Toss that in and mix that well&nbsp;&nbsp; in one direction only for about two minutes, and&nbsp; then take that filling and ‘dat’ it against your&nbsp;&nbsp;
[03:34] bowl 10-15 times to let that all come together and&nbsp; give it a touch of spring… and then, we can wrap.&nbsp; And luckily? For this style of wonton,&nbsp; it’s really wrapping on easy mode&nbsp;&nbsp;
[03:49] –basically the dim sum tutorial level. Just take about a half teaspoon and&nbsp;&nbsp; change of the filling, about 3-5 grams, and&nbsp; place that at the center of your wonton.&nbsp;&nbsp; Then fold the corner over diagonally, leaving&nbsp; the edges so that they don’t quite overlap,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[04:04] press… then take the other diagonal, folding&nbsp; it over in the same way sans overlap,&nbsp;&nbsp; press again and done. The essence here is to not&nbsp; overthink this, once you get on a roll you can&nbsp;&nbsp;
[04:16] really pump these out in a flash. So work through&nbsp; all those, and then these are ready to fry. So. For frying you can totally use less oil&nbsp; than I’m using here, even 2-3 inches worth&nbsp;&nbsp;
[04:31] in a big skillet? Totally fine… wontons&nbsp; do float – you might just need a couple&nbsp;&nbsp; more batches there than my two. But either&nbsp; way just get your oil up to 190 centigrade,&nbsp;&nbsp; plop your wontons in and then shut off the&nbsp; heat. We want the high temperature to puff&nbsp;&nbsp;
[04:46] the skin when it drops in, but for most of the&nbsp; time we’ll be aiming to fry this at about 170.&nbsp;&nbsp; So after four minutes, your wontons should be&nbsp; nice and golden brown like this, so then drain&nbsp;&nbsp;
[04:58] and toss those on a paper towel lined plate. Now. To serve these, you can definitely use&nbsp;&nbsp; whatever dipping sauce you want – a&nbsp; Cantonese chili garlic sauce is also&nbsp;&nbsp; nice…but in our old home of Shunde by far the&nbsp; most common dip these days, believe it or not,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[05:14] is this bottle of Thai sweet chili sauce from Lee&nbsp; Kum Kee. And… I mean, it definitely is quite good&nbsp;&nbsp; – it cuts the richness of the fried wonton, making&nbsp; for a pretty perfect little morsel of a snack, or,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[05:27] again, something nice and crispy next&nbsp; to some excellent Shunde style congee. But. In addition to those classic fried wontons,&nbsp; because we are influencers I guess we did want&nbsp;&nbsp;
[05:41] to let you in on a little meme food right now in&nbsp; Guangdong: Durian wontons. Now Durian, of course,&nbsp;&nbsp; is a classic meme food in China – it’s sort of&nbsp; the Chinese equivalent of how the old millennial&nbsp;&nbsp; internet saw bacon – and so in a handful of&nbsp; shops you can find these sorts of durian stuffed&nbsp;&nbsp;
[05:58] deep fried wontons. It’s a pretty fun idea, we&nbsp; thought… so we decided to make our own version,&nbsp;&nbsp; which actually kind of proved to be&nbsp; a bit of a difficult nut to crack.
[06:10] Because those shops, I would guess, use&nbsp; manufactured Durian filling, but we wanted&nbsp;&nbsp; to use Durian Durian. And Durian has a lot of&nbsp; moisture. If you just deep fry the thing directly,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[06:22] even mixed, this’s what you’ll get: [] and&nbsp; that’s just one, imagine a whole plate. So&nbsp;&nbsp; what we decided to do was first take 80 grams of&nbsp; Durian – this guy was frozen and thawed – toss on&nbsp;&nbsp;
[06:39] a paper towel and nuke it on low for 2 and a half&nbsp; minutes. That, by itself, will help… but to cover&nbsp;&nbsp; our bases with our very thin wrappers we also&nbsp; wanted to have a custard as a base. So that was&nbsp;&nbsp;
[06:52] just 30 grams of thoroughly whisked egg mixed in&nbsp; with ¼ tsp of salt, tablespoon sugar, and 30 grams&nbsp;&nbsp; of cornstarch… mixed well until no clumps remain,&nbsp; and once your nuked durian is cooled down mix that&nbsp;&nbsp;
[07:04] in as well. Then just pop that in the oven at 175C&nbsp; for 12 minutes – mixing once halfway through… and&nbsp;&nbsp; at the end you should be looking at&nbsp; something about this consistency.&nbsp;&nbsp; Then we decided to mix that well with 80&nbsp; grams of cream cheese, goes great with Durian,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[07:20] and once that’s all incorporated… we optionally&nbsp; went in with a little extra fresh Durian. More&nbsp;&nbsp; fresh Durian here will make for a stronger flavor,&nbsp; but also a higher risk when deep frying. Today we&nbsp;&nbsp;
[07:34] added an extra 50 grams which I think was a little&nbsp; too overconfident, I’d probably recommend 20-30,&nbsp;&nbsp; or just to play it safe don’t add any. Then just wrap those basically just like&nbsp;&nbsp;
[07:46] before with your homemade wrappers... Toss a&nbsp; similar ½ tsp-ish of filling in, but this time&nbsp;&nbsp; for your first diagonal fold press a little pouch&nbsp; to try to seal things a touch, then fold the other&nbsp;&nbsp;
[07:58] diagonal in the same way as before. Then fry&nbsp; in the same way as before… drop them in at 190,&nbsp;&nbsp; shut off the heat and then let it fry at around&nbsp; 170. Here we had one lost soldier, that’s fine,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[08:10] we were a little aggressive with that Durian…&nbsp; but just take those out once golden, about three&nbsp;&nbsp; minutes, and if you have a little schmutz there&nbsp; after frying I think you can just take it off. Then to go along with this, the shops we’ve&nbsp; seen online seem to serve the thing with a&nbsp;&nbsp;
[08:26] matcha sauce, which uh… didn’t sound super&nbsp; good to us… so instead we decided to whip&nbsp;&nbsp; up a Thai salted coconut milk sauce like you&nbsp; would see served alongside Mango sticky rice.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[08:38] And honestly while it was pretty good&nbsp; – we’ll have a full recipe down in the&nbsp;&nbsp; description if you do want to go that&nbsp; route… after eating multiple batches,&nbsp;&nbsp; I think I actually prefer it dipped with the&nbsp; bottled sweet chili sauce from before. Just&nbsp;&nbsp;
[08:51] cuts the richness a bit. But either way, with&nbsp; that now we’ve got a Deep Fried wonton with a&nbsp;&nbsp; bit of a Durian puff… which for a meme food, I&nbsp; think, actually does have a lot of potential.&nbsp;
[09:05] So for this kind of wonton, one great benefit&nbsp; is that you don’t really have to obsess with&nbsp;&nbsp; like the skin… the wrapper… the size, or if&nbsp; it’s neat, or clean. Because I remember very&nbsp;&nbsp;
[09:18] clearly growing up at markets I’ll see the&nbsp; wonton wrapping lady they’ll just be like… Right. So it’s a very casual wrapping. As long&nbsp; as you have a little sheet, put stuffings inside,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[09:33] squeeze. And you are done. So right! Check out the&nbsp; recipe in the description box, a big thank you to&nbsp;&nbsp; everyone that’s supporting us on Patreon… and of&nbsp; course, subscribe for more Chinese cooking videos.