Cantonese Wonton Noodle Soup
Making homemade wonton noodle soup is a labor of love, but it leaves you with a steaming bowl of Cantonese comfort food full of complexity in flavor!
Equipment
- Pressure cooker (optional)
Ingredients
For Optional Homemade Broth
- 1-2 large pork bones (any type)
- shrimp heads from 1 lb of whole shrimp (optional)
- 8 cups water
For Wontons
- 1 lb ground pork
- 1 lb peeled, deveined, tail off shrimp
- 1 egg see note
- 1 tsp light soy sauce
- 1 clove garlic, minced
- 1/2 tsp ginger, grated
- 1 12 oz. package wonton wrappers
For Noodle Soup
- 1 lb package Chinese egg noodles
- vegetables such as bok choy, choy sum, gai lan
Various Seasoning Condiments (All Optional)
- soy sauce
- sesame oil
- salt
- sugar
- pepper
- garlic
- ginger
- green onion
Instructions
To make homemade broth
- Remove heads from shrimp, peel, and devein.
- Place shrimp heads and pork bones in pressure cooker with about 8 cups of water (I fill my pot up to the 1/2 way marker). Lightly season with about a teaspoon each of salt and sugar, if desired. Cook on high pressure for 45 minutes.
- If not using whole shrimp, you can make a broth with just the pork bones. You can also just use chicken broth simmered with some ginger, garlic, and scallions.
To make wontons
- While broth is cooking, prep the wontons. Put ground pork, shrimp, egg, soy sauce, ginger, and garlic in a food processor or blender. Mix until filling resembles a thick paste. You can also add additional seasonings as you like, such as salt and pepper or sesame oil.
- Scoop a teaspoon of filling into each wonton wrapper and fold the edges as desired. See instructions in above blog post for a couple folding options.
- When broth is close to done, bring a large pot of water to boil. Blanch vegetables of choice for your noodle soup by cooking for 4-5 minutes.
- Remove vegetables and set aside. In the same pot, boil the wontons in batches until all are cooked. It should take about 4-5 minutes per batch. Wontons are done when they float to the top of the water. You can cut one open to check if the filling is cooked through.
- While the wontons are boiling, prepare bowls of soup. Scoop finished broth into serving bowls, one per person. Add condiments to taste. I like to add a drop of sesame oil and a splash of soy sauce, but see the blog post for other ideas.
- When wontons are done, cook noodles in the same pot of water according to the package instructions. While noodles are boiling, place vegetables and 4-6 wontons in each bowl of prepared soup. Finally, add the noodles when finished. Garnish with green onions, if using. Serve and enjoy!
Notes
Instead of an egg, you can also use 1 tbsp cornstarch mixed with 1 tbsp water to help the filling come together.
I find the broth made from pork bones and shrimp heads (or some sort of seafood) tastes the most like our favorite Cantonese wonton noodle soup broth in Seattle. However, plain pork broth tastes great too. In a pinch, I use chicken broth.
If I'm not making homemade broth with shrimp heads, I buy peeled, deveined, tail off shrimp and just dump them straight into the food processor. It cuts down on the prep time a lot.
When I have the kids help me stuff wontons, we sometimes need more than 1 pack of wonton wrappers, since they're not able to fill the wrappers to the max. If you're a beginner wonton wrapper, you may want to buy two packs just to be safe. Or use the leftover filling to make meatballs.