My shrimp wonton soup brings you a restaurant experience in your own kitchen. The light and springy shrimp filled wontons are served in a quick savory broth made with oyster sauce, soy sauce and sesame oil. It’s comforting, elegant, and surprisingly easy to make.
Prepare the filling: Chop shrimp into very small pieces, then mince until it forms a coarse paste. Add egg white, Shaoxing wine, sesame oil, white pepper, ginger, salt and cornstarch. Mix until it forms a sticky paste.
Use a fine cheese grater to grate the carrot, until you get a loosely packed 1/4 cup. You can also julienne the carrot then mince it if you don’t have a grater. Add the carrot and scallion white to the shrimp and mix well.
Wrap the wontons: Work on the wontons one at a time. Wet the edges of the wrapper. Place about 1 heaping teaspoon of filling in the center of the wrapper. Fold the wrapper into a triangle, then press the edges tightly to seal the filling. Bind both ends and press them together to lock the filling inside the wrapper (See the pictures in my blog post above). Place the wrapped wontons onto a prepared tray, a finger’s width apart. (Now you can store the wontons if not used immediately. See blog post above for storage tips)
Make sure to use a wet paper towel or clean wet kitchen towel to cover the wonton wrappers and the wrapped wontons, to prevent them from drying out.
Prepare the soup base: Divide the oyster sauce, light soy sauce, and papery shrimp into four medium soup bowls.
Cook the wontons: Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Cook the wontons in two batches if you plan to use them all. Or only cook the number you plan to serve. When the big pot of water comes to a boil, add half of the wontons. Stir gently and consistently with a spatula to prevent them from sticking to the bottom. Cook until the wontons are floating on top, then continue cooking for another 2 minutes.
Assemble the wonton bowls: Transfer 5 or 6 wontons into each of the prepared serving bowls. Add 1 cup wonton boiling water into each bowl and stir to mix well. Drizzle with sesame oil and garnish with scallion greens. Serve hot.
Notes
I used extra thin wonton wrappers in this recipe, because it allows you to pack in a good amount of filling and the wrappers are thin. If you use smaller wonton wrappers (usually Japanese wonton wrappers are smaller and thinner), you will need to adjust the filling (1 teaspoon or less) and cook it a little less time (1 minute after the wontons float to the top). If using smaller wrappers, I would only fold the wontons into triangles without the final fold (pinching the two ends together), so you can wrap in more filling per wonton.
This recipe makes about 30 wontons. If using smaller wrappers, you might make up to 40 smaller wontons. For wontons of this size, I usually serve 5 to 6 wontons as an appetizer. For a main dish, serve 8 to 10 wontons per serving, or add some noodles to make it a meal. For a bigger bowl, you will also want to double the sauce and use 2 cups of wonton cooking water for each bowl.