Cantonese-style fried wontons, from scratch

[00:00] These deep fried wontons are what I look  for in a deep fried wonton.. A lot of   recipes online for wontons they’ll often  really focus on the filling of the thing,   but for me, a great fried wonton is all about  the wrapper. You see, the way I look at it,  

[00:16] I think there’s three general categories of fried  wontons out there, which I’ll call hefty doughy,   airy wafery, and thin crispy. So if you’re  used to takeout style wontons outside of China,  

[00:28] generally those guys are hefty doughy. They’re  thick so they can handle a whole good meatball’s   worth of filling… but it’s so substantive that  the wrapper can sometimes get either a little   hard after extended frying or conversely end  up a bit doughy. Then the other extreme is  

[00:44] this sort that you can find in Guangdong that’re  really smooth and wafer-y… very common these days   in a restaurant setting, it’s not my personal  favorite, and they get that way using pre-made   spring roll wrappers. For my personal tastes,  this one here is my goldilocks – it’s thin,  

[01:03] so no meatball, but you’ve got this wonderfully  crispy blistered skin that’s very dippable,   very snackable, and also I gotta say, really  quite excellent next to a bowl of good congee.

[01:18] So. To make our wrapper aesthetic ideal,  we’ll first mix 100 grams of AP flour in   with a quarter teaspoon of salt and an eighth  teaspoon of sodium carbonate… the alkaline   there to help the texture of the dough and get  those wrapper bubbles when frying. Then to that,  

[01:35] swirl in 50 grams of water, and just roughly  knead that for about a minute or two until you   get a proper ball… and then let that sit for  at least 40 minutes to let the gluten develop. Then, after that time, to roll, we’ll be passing  this all through a pasta maker – the super old  

[01:51] school way would be of course bouncing on a bamboo  pole, but we don’t own a massive bamboo pole and   this will definitely make our lives easier. What  you’ll want to do is pass it through the widest  

[02:04] setting of a pasta maker, fold it in half, and  then pass it again… and again, repeating seven   times in all. This step is basically the pole  bouncing equivalent and will strengthen and  

[02:16] homogenize our dough. Then, after that, roll it  down through setting three to extend the dough,   and then cut that dough in two. Then roll those  two through the second smallest setting and  

[02:28] if you wanted that hefty doughy wrapper you  could stop here, at about this consistency…   but for ours we’ll dust it thoroughly then with  flour, and roll it again on the very thinnest. 

[02:41] And with that sheet, now we can cut  those up, into roughly 6 by 6, 7 by   7ish squares… and just like that, you’ve got  yourself a whole bunch of wonton wrappers.

[02:53] Now, to fill those, we really won’t need to  overthink this because again the meat here   is just this tiny little pouch. So we’ll  start off with 100 grams of ground pork,   about 20% fat is ideal… then give that an  additional hand chop with a knife or cleaver  

[03:09] for about three minutes to get it into a bit  of a smoother paste. Move it to a bowl, then to   that toss in an 1/8 tsp each salt, sugar, chicken  bouillon powder… a good sprinkle of white pepper,  

[03:21] and a mix of a ½ tsp liaojiu aka Shaoxing wine  and cornstarch. Toss that in and mix that well   in one direction only for about two minutes, and  then take that filling and ‘dat’ it against your  

[03:34] bowl 10-15 times to let that all come together and  give it a touch of spring… and then, we can wrap.  And luckily? For this style of wonton,  it’s really wrapping on easy mode  

[03:49] –basically the dim sum tutorial level. Just take about a half teaspoon and   change of the filling, about 3-5 grams, and  place that at the center of your wonton.   Then fold the corner over diagonally, leaving  the edges so that they don’t quite overlap,  

[04:04] press… then take the other diagonal, folding  it over in the same way sans overlap,   press again and done. The essence here is to not  overthink this, once you get on a roll you can  

[04:16] really pump these out in a flash. So work through  all those, and then these are ready to fry. So. For frying you can totally use less oil  than I’m using here, even 2-3 inches worth  

[04:31] in a big skillet? Totally fine… wontons  do float – you might just need a couple   more batches there than my two. But either  way just get your oil up to 190 centigrade,   plop your wontons in and then shut off the  heat. We want the high temperature to puff  

[04:46] the skin when it drops in, but for most of the  time we’ll be aiming to fry this at about 170.   So after four minutes, your wontons should be  nice and golden brown like this, so then drain  

[04:58] and toss those on a paper towel lined plate. Now. To serve these, you can definitely use   whatever dipping sauce you want – a  Cantonese chili garlic sauce is also   nice…but in our old home of Shunde by far the  most common dip these days, believe it or not,  

[05:14] is this bottle of Thai sweet chili sauce from Lee  Kum Kee. And… I mean, it definitely is quite good   – it cuts the richness of the fried wonton, making  for a pretty perfect little morsel of a snack, or,  

[05:27] again, something nice and crispy next  to some excellent Shunde style congee. But. In addition to those classic fried wontons,  because we are influencers I guess we did want  

[05:41] to let you in on a little meme food right now in  Guangdong: Durian wontons. Now Durian, of course,   is a classic meme food in China – it’s sort of  the Chinese equivalent of how the old millennial   internet saw bacon – and so in a handful of  shops you can find these sorts of durian stuffed  

[05:58] deep fried wontons. It’s a pretty fun idea, we  thought… so we decided to make our own version,   which actually kind of proved to be  a bit of a difficult nut to crack.

[06:10] Because those shops, I would guess, use  manufactured Durian filling, but we wanted   to use Durian Durian. And Durian has a lot of  moisture. If you just deep fry the thing directly,  

[06:22] even mixed, this’s what you’ll get: [] and  that’s just one, imagine a whole plate. So   what we decided to do was first take 80 grams of  Durian – this guy was frozen and thawed – toss on  

[06:39] a paper towel and nuke it on low for 2 and a half  minutes. That, by itself, will help… but to cover   our bases with our very thin wrappers we also  wanted to have a custard as a base. So that was  

[06:52] just 30 grams of thoroughly whisked egg mixed in  with ¼ tsp of salt, tablespoon sugar, and 30 grams   of cornstarch… mixed well until no clumps remain,  and once your nuked durian is cooled down mix that  

[07:04] in as well. Then just pop that in the oven at 175C  for 12 minutes – mixing once halfway through… and   at the end you should be looking at  something about this consistency.   Then we decided to mix that well with 80  grams of cream cheese, goes great with Durian,  

[07:20] and once that’s all incorporated… we optionally  went in with a little extra fresh Durian. More   fresh Durian here will make for a stronger flavor,  but also a higher risk when deep frying. Today we  

[07:34] added an extra 50 grams which I think was a little  too overconfident, I’d probably recommend 20-30,   or just to play it safe don’t add any. Then just wrap those basically just like  

[07:46] before with your homemade wrappers... Toss a  similar ½ tsp-ish of filling in, but this time   for your first diagonal fold press a little pouch  to try to seal things a touch, then fold the other  

[07:58] diagonal in the same way as before. Then fry  in the same way as before… drop them in at 190,   shut off the heat and then let it fry at around  170. Here we had one lost soldier, that’s fine,  

[08:10] we were a little aggressive with that Durian…  but just take those out once golden, about three   minutes, and if you have a little schmutz there  after frying I think you can just take it off. Then to go along with this, the shops we’ve  seen online seem to serve the thing with a  

[08:26] matcha sauce, which uh… didn’t sound super  good to us… so instead we decided to whip   up a Thai salted coconut milk sauce like you  would see served alongside Mango sticky rice.  

[08:38] And honestly while it was pretty good  – we’ll have a full recipe down in the   description if you do want to go that  route… after eating multiple batches,   I think I actually prefer it dipped with the  bottled sweet chili sauce from before. Just  

[08:51] cuts the richness a bit. But either way, with  that now we’ve got a Deep Fried wonton with a   bit of a Durian puff… which for a meme food, I  think, actually does have a lot of potential. 

[09:05] So for this kind of wonton, one great benefit  is that you don’t really have to obsess with   like the skin… the wrapper… the size, or if  it’s neat, or clean. Because I remember very  

[09:18] clearly growing up at markets I’ll see the  wonton wrapping lady they’ll just be like… Right. So it’s a very casual wrapping. As long  as you have a little sheet, put stuffings inside,  

[09:33] squeeze. And you are done. So right! Check out the  recipe in the description box, a big thank you to   everyone that’s supporting us on Patreon… and of  course, subscribe for more Chinese cooking videos.