{Celebrate China} Wonton Soup

With Chinese New Year/Spring Festival coming up soon, this is the first of several posts celebrating Sunshine's Chinese heritage.  I am trying to expand my total lack of knowledge in making traditional Chinese food.  Yesterday, I attempted Wonton Soup.  Although all of our wontons eventually fell apart and the fillings came out, the soup itself was quite tasty.  Everyone else thought so too, as it was totally gone by the end of the night (I made it for a soup tasting party).  Angel had several helpings, and I got a thumbs up from Sweetie (although I don't think she would have the heart to tell me she didn't like it anyway).  I have leftover frozen meat filling and am challenging myself to try it again now that I have researched wonton folding.  I combined a couple recipes to get what I was looking for in this soup, and I have included what I did below.  Don't use our example of wonton folding if you want to cook this soup, check youtube for some tutorials.

Wonton Soup

Wonton Filling:
1 lb of raw ground meat (pork is traditionally used, but I chose chicken)
1 tbsp Chinese cooking wine or rice wine
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp sesame oil
1 tbsp fresh chopped ginger (I used my Pampered Chef chopper)
2 cloves of garlic, minced
green onions - maybe 3? (I added enough until it looked good)

48 wonton wrappers (I used store-bought)

Soup Broth:
12 cups low-sodium chicken stock
4 cups water
2-3 tsp sesame oil
2-3 tsp rice vinegar
green onions for garnish
sea salt to taste

Mix all of the filling ingredients together in a bowl.  Separately, combine the chicken stock and water together in a big pot, and bring to a boil.  While waiting for the soup broth to boil, fill the wonton wrappers using about 1 tsp of filling each.  It's important not to overfill the wrappers.  Check out this youtube video for a wonton folding tutorial, don't use my pictures as a guide.  If you fill them all at once like I did,  with the wrappers laid out on the counter, make sure to cover them up with a towel while you're working.  The air will make the wrappers dry out, which then makes them very difficult to wrap because they break.  If you are worried about the wrappers drying out, you can fill, fold and then cover each wonton individually.

Once you have all the wontons stuffed and folded, and your broth is boiling, drop the wontons in the broth, one at a time.  Bring the broth to a boil again, and simmer 4-6 minutes, until the wontons are cooked through.  Then stir in the sesame oil and rice vinegar.  Add green onions and sea salt to taste.  Serve and enjoy!

Disclaimer: I do not claim to be a Chinese food cooking expert.  But I am happy with the results of this soup, and will definitely be making it again!