Pork Wontons, 馄饨
The secret to Fuzhou-style wontons are these special wonton wrappers made from dehydrated pork skin. As far as we are aware, you cannot buy these in the US anymore, and you can only get them in China. It’s a very unique texture and taste, compared to dough-based wrappers.
"You can't buy these wonton wrappers anymore" - Mom
Ingredients
pork skin wonton wrappers (同利 肉燕皮)
4 lb pork belly
1 tsp white pepper
8 tsp sugar
½ tsp salt
1½ tsp soy sauce
2 tsp diced ginger
scallions
Cooking Tools
food processor
large bowl
steamer
Steps
You can start with peeling some ginger and dicing it. Put it aside for now.
To prepare the meat filling, remove the skin from the pork belly, keeping the meat and fat.
Ground the pork in a food processor.
Add soy sauce, salt, sugar, white pepper and mix well. Then add chopped scallions and diced ginger, mixing well again.
The resulting meat filling would be too tough as is. Add water into the filling and mix well until soft.
It should have this consistency afterwards.
Cut the wonton wrappers into 3in x 3in squares.
Briefly dip each individual wrapper in cold water and stack in piles.
Keep extra wonton wrappers in the freezer, which are generally good for 1 year.
To wrap wontons with meat filling, first start by placing the wonton wrapper flat on your hand.
Using chopsticks, place a small amount of meat in the center of the wrapper.
Using your hand, carefully wrap the wonton around the meat.
When the wonton is wrapped properly, the wrapper should be flat against the meat with no folds. Any folds on the bottom will weaken the bond and cause them to open while cooking.
Repeat.
The best way to cook the wontons is to place them in a steamer.
Once cooked, extra wontons can be frozen to be used later. I’d re-steam the frozen wontons in the future.
To serve the steamed wontons, place the wontons in with hot broth. Chicken or pork broths work really well. If you don't have broth on hand, you can make a quick ad-hoc wonton soup by boiling water, oil, white pepper, vinegar and salt to taste.
Cooking by boiling instead of steaming:
Wontons can also be cooked in boiling water, but we don’t recommend this because the wontons will lose a lot of their flavor using this method.
If you decide to boil the wontons, boil the water first, before putting the wontons in.
You’ll know when they’re done once the wonton flips upside down, and the meat side is floating.
Voila!
