Recipe: Easy Wonton Soup

I am a firm believer in the power of dumplings and soup. Not only is the combination tasty and comforting, but a little upfront effort also yields prepped emergency meals to stash in my freezer — and who doesn’t want that? These easy wontons are full of juicy, savory ground pork and swim in a 15-minute gingery broth that starts with boxed chicken broth. Best of all, the ingredients are all easy-to-find, and the wontons use a simple but pretty wrapping technique.

Wontons most often contain ground pork (and sometimes shrimp), which has lots of flavor and fat, but you can sub your favorite ground meat here instead. (If you opt for poultry such as chicken or turkey, stick to dark meat for the best texture). And unlike meatballs or meatloaf, where you want to handle the ground meat as little as possible, you’ll do a fair amount of mixing as you put together the filling. Sticky and paste-like is the goal, making the filling easier to wrap up but also giving the wontons a dense (not crumbly) texture.

This recipe makes about 32 wontons so that you can use up as much of the package of wonton wrappers as possible. The beauty is that you can just cook the amount you want to eat now, and freeze the rest. Freeze the wrapped wontons on a baking sheet until frozen solid, then pop into a freezer bag. When the wonton soup craving strikes, boil straight from the freezer. The broth is also freezer-friendly, so make the full batch, then transfer what you don’t eat right away into jars or containers before freezing. Now you have homemade wonton soup at your fingertips!

Wonton soup already has protein from the filling and starch from the wrappers, so to make it a full meal, I like to load it up with veggies. I often blanch bok choy in the broth for a few minutes, or stir in some baby spinach at the end. Whatever greens are calling out to you will work! For an extra-filling meal, cook up some Asian noodles for a satisfying wonton noodle soup.