How to make wonton skin from scratch. Not too long ago I made some wonton soup. Here is the link to the recipe. I have always buy shop-bought ones simply for its convenience. So I couldn’t say I made it from scratch. As making from scratch includes making the wonton (云吞) skin as well. Also by making from scratch one can also ensure that no additives or preservatives are added to the wonton skin. Because some manufacturers do add lye water which is not so good for you but it makes the skin nice by giving it a nice bite to it.
Wonton is the equivalent of Italian ravioli commonly called as Chinese ravioli. So the pastry is almost the same as making ravioli however it is much thinner as well. That’s where you get the soft silky pastry it comes from having a thin skin.
So which means a bit of elbow grease and making a stretchy dough will have to achieve a nice thin pastry.
This pastry is also similar to making a pasta or ravioli dough. Wonton skin is more egg base compare to other types of Chinese dumplings like pot sticker dumpling (锅贴饺子) or the famous Shanghai sheng Jian bao (神剑报). Wonton skin needs to be quite thin as in wonton soup the wonton resembles of the clouds. To get this cloud effect the skin needs to be thin. Much thinner than the ordinary home pasta machine would do.
To make this skin by rolling pin one needs to use a rolling pin so as to make it nice and thin.
For the type of flour, it is possible to use the pasta oo grade flour or if you can hold of dumpling flour from Chinese grocers. The amount of gluten is different from oo grade or plain flour that is found in supermarkets.
Recipe for homemade pasta skin
Recipe makes 20 wonton pastry cases
11/2 cups Type OO flour or plain flour (reserve some flour for rolling out the pastry cases)
1 egg
1/3 cup cold water
Mix the flour and egg together then slowly add till the dought becomes together. Then knead till the dough becomes stretchy and binds together. Then roll out the wonton pastry (cases) as thinly possible. Some elbow grease is needed in this process. Otherwise, if there is a pasta machine around do use it. Once it’s rolled out thinly let is rest it is now ready to use.
Wonton cases for frying are slightly thicker than the ones made for soup. Thank you very much for dropping by.
