By Galadriel Bond
When my mother was a little girl in China, she moved from her home in the country to the big city. While her mom was in university to become a doctor, my mother stayed at home with her grandmother. After school, my mother would help her grandmother make wontons. When she was six she would ferry them from the table to the counter. When she was ten, she would help wrap the wontons up.
When I was young, my mother would buy premade-store-bought wontons. I didn’t eat a variety of food as a child, but I loved those. Eventually the stores stopped selling that brand, and we lost a food item that I ate. In order to feed me, my mother tried to make the wontons from her childhood. She tested it out first, because I wouldn’t eat it if I didn’t like it, but something was wrong. It didn’t taste right.
I hadn’t had eaten wonton in a few years. My 外婆 (what I call my grandmother [Wàipó]) came to visit us one summer. My mother asked her mom what she was doing wrong, what she needed to do to get it right. The egg! She was missing the egg.
Nowadays, my mother sits down every few weeks to make a large batch of wontons. We keep them in the fridge until they all get eaten up.
I should probably learn how to properly make them. Otherwise I’ll eat nothing but pizza and ramen every night during university.
When I was young, my mother would buy premade-store-bought wontons. I didn’t eat a variety of food as a child, but I loved those. Eventually the stores stopped selling that brand, and we lost a food item that I ate. In order to feed me, my mother tried to make the wontons from her childhood. She tested it out first, because I wouldn’t eat it if I didn’t like it, but something was wrong. It didn’t taste right.
I hadn’t had eaten wonton in a few years. My 外婆 (what I call my grandmother [Wàipó]) came to visit us one summer. My mother asked her mom what she was doing wrong, what she needed to do to get it right. The egg! She was missing the egg.
Nowadays, my mother sits down every few weeks to make a large batch of wontons. We keep them in the fridge until they all get eaten up.
I should probably learn how to properly make them. Otherwise I’ll eat nothing but pizza and ramen every night during university.
Ingredients
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In Chinese recipes, especially ones passed down generations, they don't tell you exactly how much of anything to put in. You are simply supposed to guesstimate how much "a little bit" is to you.
For this demonstration of the recipe we used three packs of wonton wraps. So we used about 4 pounds of pork, three eggs, and a little over a tablespoon of corn flour, half a cup of water, and an approximate amount of salt, soya sauce, and cooking wine. You could also add some finely-chopped vegetables and other flavourings, but I don’t eat them. Remember that cooking is experimentation, and you could separate some of the mixture into another bowl to taste test. |
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How To Make
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What the pork mixture should look like once finished.
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How To Cook
- Turn the heat on high and salt the water, wait until boiling
- Place wontons (10-20) in boiling water
- Wait until boiling again, let boil for 30 seconds
- Add half a cup of water and stir
- Repeat steps 3 and 4 two more times
- Turn the heat to medium and let simmer of 90 seconds
- Cut open one to make sure the pork is cooked all the way through
- Plate and turn off the heat