Wontonderful!

Easy homemade wontons made with ground beef, mushrooms, and water chestnuts. I made these for an event and they were gone within a matter of 20 minutes. I usually use ground pork and shrimp, but the supermarket I went to was out of ground pork. You can experiment with the filling with any choice of meat you'd like, or you can even make a vegetarian filling (medium or firm tofu, mushrooms, scallions, carrots, peanuts). You can fry them, steam them, or even boil them when you're done. I like making them in bulk and freezing them in ziploc bags so I have them readily available. Taste great eaten by themselves, or you can add them to chicken broth to make wonton soup.

Cost of making 100 wontons (servings about 10):

$16.50 ($1.65 per serving!)

Ingredients:

2lbs Ground Beef (or meat of your choice)

1/2 cup Soaked and minced dry shiitake mushrooms

1/2 cup Minced canned water chestnuts

4 Scallion Stalks, chopped

4tblsp Soy Sauce

1tblsp Sesame Seed oil

1tblsp Minced Garlic

1tblsp Minced Ginger

White Pepper to taste

2 pkgs Frozen Wonton Wrappers

3 eggs

Peanut oil for frying

• Combine all of the ingredients in a large bowl and let sit for 10 minutes.
• Next, prepare your wrapping station. In a shallow bowl or dish, whisk together the two eggs until combined. Have your wonton skins, egg wash, and filling readily accessible.
• Grab 1 wonton skin and place it in front of you so that it looks like a diamond. Take some of the egg wash (with a brush or your fingers) and spread it on the lower right and left sides of the wonton skin (it should look like a V). Make sure not to put too much; it shouldn't be more than 1cm from the sides.
• Place 1 tsp - 1 tblsp of filling near the bottom of the wrapper. Start rolling the wonton skin over the filling, and continue rolling until only a small piece of the wonton skin is left. Turn the wonton 180 degrees (turned upside down) and pinch the sides to secure that the filling won't come out.
• Take some of the egg wash and lightly coat the two ends and slowly bring the ends together (don't do it fast or you'll rip the wrapper!)
• After you wrap them, you may cook them or freeze them for future use

Optional:

• If you're having trouble wrapping them like the way I did above, you can certainly wrap them any way you want. Easiest way is to place the filling in the middle of the wonton skin, coat the sides with egg wash, and fold diagonally to create a triangle. Press on the sides to seal the wonton.
• You can serve them by themselves, or you can pair them up with some dipping sauce: combine 1/2 cup rice wine vinegar, 4 tblsp brown sugar, 2 tblsp pineapple juice, 1 tblsp ketchup, 1 tsp soy sauce in a small sauce pan. Mix together 2tsp corn starch and 4tsp pineapple juice and then add into the saucepan. Boil for 3 minutes. You may add more cornstarch to make it thicker.