Wontons are ubiquitous in Chinese restaurants (at least in the USA). They usually come either deep-fried and crispy, as a snack, or served in a soup. Less commonly you see the fried version with sweet-and-sour sauce, or they may be steamed or boiled and served over quick-cooked bean sprouts with a hot-and-sour sauce.
All wontons are made from a stiff pasta dough, either just flour and water, or maybe with eggs (or with some yellow food coloring) added. The dough is rolled out very thin and cut into squares about 3 inches on a side. The filling is either seasoned ground meat (usually pork), or you could do a vegetarian version with minced vegetables or tofu or whatever.
The home-style version of wontons is very different from, and infinitely superior to, your run-of-the-mill restaurant version. Restaurant wontons tend to have a tiny, infinitesimal amount of filling--just a dab at the end of a chopstick--which is applied to the center of the wrapper, then the hand not holding the chopstick is used to crumple up the wrapper around the filling. Home-style wontons have much more filling (about 1/2 teaspoon), and are carefully folded into one of three basic shapes.
I learned to make wontons from two of the best Chinese cooks in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the mid-1970s. My filling recipe is courtesy of Joyce Chen, who ran what was arguably for many years the best Mandarin Chinese restaurant in the Boston area. She also hosted the program "Joyce Chen Cooks" on syndicated public television (in those days it was called "Educational TV"). It was her program that first inspired me to start cooking for myself, and the filling recipe is from The Joyce Chen Cookbook. The folding methodology comes courtesy of Colleen (I never knew her surname), the proprietress of Colleen's Chinese Cuisine in Cambridge, who also taught cooking lessons and to whom I'm deeply indebted for my knowledge of Chinese cooking technique.
So here's how you make real, home-style wontons.
Start by buying a package or two of fresh wonton skins. These are available in most grocery stores (in New England, at least). Frozen wonton skins, defrosted, will be OK for soup wontons, but they won't fry properly. For fried wontons, you want the skins as fresh as possible, and that usually means going to an oriental market for them. If you feel adventurous and you're good at pasta, you could try making your own wonton skins at home. I don't recommend it, but of course it's the ultimate way to guarantee fresh skins. Your usual wonton skin package from e.g. Nasoya will approximately cover filling made from 1/2 pound of ground meat (what this recipe calls for). I prefer the wonton skins they have in Chinatown in Boston, which tend to be fresher, and also tend to be cut exactly square--I've noticed that the Nasoya and other supermarket brands often are slightly rectangular, which is OK, but it makes the folding a bit more awkward.
Home-style wontons are very straightforward and easy to make except for one tricky part--the folding. There are three styles of fold: the leaf, the nun's (or nurse's) cap, and the flower. In all three styles, you end up with the filling completely enclosed and sealed, and with four corner sections of wrapper. In the leaf style, you have a two-pointed shape with doubled layers of wrapper at the ends. This shape is the best for soup wontons because of the doubled layer of wrapper. In the flower style, you end up with a four-pointed shape that has only a single layer of wrapper going to each point. This style exposes the maximum amount of wrapper surface area and is best suited to giving fried wontons the maximum amount of crunchiness. The nun's cap fold is midway between the two, and is a good general-purpose style suitable for either boiling/steaming/soup or deep-frying.
Raw wontons intended for steaming, boiling, or soup freeze well. I don't recommend using defrosted wontons for deep-frying. Freezing changes the texture of the dough and it doesn't fry up the same.
My descriptions of the folding techniques are going to seem complicated. If I could show you in person, you'd see it's really simple. Please forgive the crude diagrams. The forum only lets me add four diagram attachments at a time, so I'll describe each folding technique in its own message. Here I'll give you the filling recipe and describe how to deep-fry wontons.
Pork Wonton Filling
This is the recipe from Joyce Chen's cookbook.
1/2 pound ground pork
1 TBS soy sauce (general-purpose, not dark or sweet)
1 TBS neutral vegetable oil (I prefer peanut oil; EVOO or sesame oil is not suitable)
2 TBS water
1/4 tsp sugar
1 scallion, minced finely
1 tsp cornstarch (or arrowroot or other vegetable starch)
1 tsp shao hsing Chinese cooking wine (or dry [fino] Sherry)
Just mix everything together.
Fried Wontons
Heat neutral vegetable oil (I prefer peanut oil; flavored oils such as olive oil are not suitable) at least 2-3 inches deep, to 365 degrees F, in a wok or deep-frying vessel. This is the one case in oriental cooking where I prefer an electric wok, as I find it easier to regulate the temperature. Drop the wontons into the hot oil face-down so that the petals will spread out. Make sure you don't overcrowd them. As they bob back to the surface, turn them face-up (I find two chopsticks are ideal for manipulating wontons in hot oil). Let them all fry face-up for a minute or so until they start turning golden color. You'll also hear increased sizzling as the moisture from the filling starts boiling. Now turn them all over face-down to let the points turn golden brown. Then turn them all face-up again to finish cooking the filling (about 30 seconds or less). In my electric wok, at the end of this cooking time the sizzling from the moisture in the wontons has mostly ceased. They should be a uniform golden-brown color. Scoop them out (the traditional Chinese brass wire frying strainer is the perfect utensil for this, if you're using a wok) and drain on paper towels. Be sure to let the oil come back up to temperature before you fry the next batch.
Serve with Chinese plum sauce (such as Koon Chun brand, available in most Chinese markets; the restaurant "duck sauce" is a dumbed-down version of this traditional condiment) or Chinese hot mustard sauce. Be careful if you eat them directly from the wok that you don't scald your tongue or palate! They're delicious cold, too. You can store them in a rolled-up paper bag in the refrigerator for several days.
-Paul W.