Crab Rangoon Dip Is a Party-Approved Twist on the Chinese Takeout Favorite

We don’t get very drastic seasonal changes here in my part of California, so I track the seasons with something else instead: food. Right between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve is when Dungeness crab season usually starts here in San Francisco. The opening of the season leads to much celebration, crab feeds, and crab cracking. It’s one of my favorite times of year, especially as restaurants lean into crab dishes hard. This dip from Chef Brandon Rice at Ernest restaurant is a riff on the Chinese American dish crab rangoon, and it’s a fun, tasty way to celebrate Lunar New Year, the Super Bowl, or any other time you want an amazing appetizer. It’s so good, I’ve ordered it twice at the restaurant, which I rarely ever do. 

The creamy base is super simple: Cream cheese (can we all just agree that all good dips start with this?), sour cream, chives, and lots and lots of crab meat (Dungeness out here in San Francisco) beaten together with a mixer. It’s not skimpy with the crab meat, and rightly so, as every bite is loaded with crab. While freshly cooked and picked crab will of course make the dip taste amazing, get the best crab you can — I’ve had great success with the lump crab meat available in plastic containers at Whole Foods.

There are two other elements that make crab rangoon yummy: The sweet and sour dipping sauce and fried wonton wrappers. For this dip, the sauce is a combination of peach jam, soy sauce, vinegar, brown sugar, and ketchup quickly simmered together and thickened with a cornstarch slurry. Finally, store-bought wonton wrappers quickly deep-fried turn into crisp, blistered vehicles for the dip. (You can also bake the wrappers lightly brushed with vegetable oil on both sides in a 350ºF oven until crisp, about 4 minute per side, but they won’t be as crisp and blister-y as the fried.)

Ernest serves the dip in wide, shallow bowls, making an indentation in the dip for the sweet and sour sauce, and garnishes it with more chives and pretty little chive flowers for a beautiful presentation. I love to pick up a wonton chip and slather it generously with dip, making sure to get some of the sauce into each bite. Unlike crab rangoon, which requires folding each one like a dumpling before frying, it’s left up to the eater to assemble their perfect bite. Paired with a frosty glass of sparkling wine, my dream fancy happy hour is complete.

• Break up the prep. The sauce, chips, and dip can all be made up to two days ahead, so space out the prep if you want.
• Serve in shallow bowls. To get a good ratio of dip to sauce, spoon the dip into wide, shallow bowls so that there’s plenty of space on top for the sauce.
• Fry in a wok if you have one. I love the surface area of a wok for deep-frying and because of its tapered shape, you don’t need as much oil. It’s great for frying a good handful of wonton wrappers at a time, and the deep-frying helps to continue seasoning carbon steel woks!
• Make wonton soup with the remaining wrappers. You’ll only need about half a package of wonton wrappers for the dip, so use the remainder for pork wontons to serve in soup!