Cooks should practice making and folding wontons before preparing wonton soup.
Wonton soup, made with Chinese dumplings called wontons, is one of the most popular dishes in Chinese food. The hardest thing about making this soup at home is making the meatballs that give the dish its name. To make good wonton soup, cooks should practice making and folding wontons until the process becomes easy. Additionally, cooks should experiment with wonton fillings, broths, and vegetable ingredients to find a combination they like for their wonton soup recipe.
Folding wontons gets easier with practice.
One of the attractions of wonton soup is that, unlike other Chinese dishes, it is easy to prepare by the home cook and can be made with a few simple and inexpensive ingredients. After preparation, the wontons are cooked in a soup made with broth, water, and other ingredients of the cook’s choice, such as chives, soy sauce, spinach, cabbage, and ginger.
A common component in Chinese cuisine, wontons are dumplings that can be filled with meat, fish, or vegetables. A cook can make wontons completely from scratch or purchase wontons that have already been filled and folded. Another option is for the cook to buy pre-made packets and other things and fold them himself. Folding wontons can be intimidating to some people, but it’s easier than most think, and those who do it often find that it gets much easier with practice. Many Chinese cooks have turned wonton folding into an art form and can use very intricate and complex folding techniques, but wonton soup will taste just as good using a basic dual technique.
The next step in making wonton soup is to create the soup itself. Wonton soup is a very versatile dish and there are few limits to what can be used to fill wontons or create stock. Any broth that can be used as a base for a soup can be used to make wonton soup, including chicken broth, beef broth, or vegetable broth for vegetarians. Other ingredients often added to the broth include chives, garlic, ginger, mushrooms, and sesame oil.
To cook wonton soup, first prepare the wontons. In a saucepan, mix the broth with the other desired ingredients and bring to a boil. Then reduce the heat and add the wontons, letting them cook until they start to float, which means they’re done. An alternative method is to cook the wontons separately in plain water, then add them to the soup.