Perfect Wonton Soup

Tonight, I’m going to make the easiest wonton soup ever and because I already cooked the pork over the weekend, I’ve got leftovers that I can use to make a super easy filling. Start with about six to eight cups of broth in a big stock pot. We’re going to put that over medium high to high heat to get it simmering and to that I’m going to add about a cup of shredded cabbage and carrot mix which is the coleslaw mix which is moistly shredded cabbage anyway so I’m going to put a cup of that in and what’s going to happen is as the broth comes up to simmer, it’s going to soften the cabbage and get it nice and tender like a real wonton soup. Now we’ve got that leftover pork. What I want to do is I just want to give it a little quick chop and then put it in the food processor just to get some of the pieces smaller. I’ll cut away any little bit of fat that I see. I’ve got a tablespoon each of soy sauce and a tablespoon of dark sesame oil. Give this a quick pulse. That’s great. Now if you’re wondering why I do it in there and not like a chop, I want to just make sure that the pork was really nice and small, tiny little pieces so when I put them in the wontons, it’s easier to fold them into little purses and you’ll see because I don’t have the luxury of time but I still want to enjoy these wontons so I’m going to bring this over here. These are the wonton wrappers and they’re sold in the refrigerator section of the supermarket. Sometimes you can find them in the frozen food section of the supermarket, that comes square, they come round, they come big, they come little. I’m going to use the square ones for this one so I’m just going to lay out what my cutting board can hold and do it in batches. You take about a tablespoon of the filling, put right in the middle. The important thing is wetting the outside of the wonton skin so have a little dish of water nearby. Wet all the edges because that is going to make the edges all stick together. I’m just going to pinch these edges together into a little purse. Isn’t that adorable and fast? I’m going to keep making some more. I think why I love wonton so much is I used to live in New York and I used to walk by Sammy’s noodle shop and watch this woman just miraculously make wonton so fast. Obviously much faster than I am one after the other after the others, trays and trays of them. White, green, they were gorgeous and they were delicious so this is my take on them. Now these are all their cute little bundles. They’re going to go into the simmering broth. These only take five minutes. Most of the work has been done by precooking the pork and having this broth simmering. There we go. The wontons get a little bit translucent, that’s how you know they’re finished which gives me the perfect amount of time to make carrot ginger salad. I’ll see you in a minute. Let me grab my carrots. Now your best friend now in the produce section is these preshredded cabbage in the soup and now I have the preshredded carrots too. So I’m going to open up a couple of bags of these, it’s going to be about two cups. Now bottled ginger dressing. This is kind of an Asian inspired meal so I’m using the bottled ginger dressing that you can find in the refrigerated section. It’s usually right near the produce section. See the big hunks of ginger in here. It’s wonderful. Now three tablespoons for this. I’m going to toss it together. This is a great way to get your kids to eat carrots if they don’t already like other kids do but to kind of get them to explore new flavors. I’m going to go ahead and put this on a serving plate. This is the time you want to pull out your colorful plates, any kind of your fun Asian accessories that you have. If you have any chopsticks left over from your last takeout. Because I’ll tell you, you’re not going to be doing takeout very much anymore with this fast, this was definitely faster than going to the restaurant waiting, taking it home. A little for the plate, a little for the coif. A little for me and that’s good. Let me check my wontons, see how they are getting translucent. You can see they puffed up. They’re beautiful. I’m going to give this a little taste. A great way to top this off, not only for color but for flavor is fresh scallions just for a colorful treat. This doesn’t look like your favorite restaurants wonton soup. That’s what I’m talking about. It’s wonderful.