Deluxe Wor Wonton Soup

Units

Temperature

Servings

Ingredients

Wontons

24 pork and prawn wontons, from the wonton soup recipe, fresh or frozen

Broth

1 3/4 L chicken stock
10 g fresh ginger, sliced into coins
2 garlic cloves, smashed but whole
30 ml light soy sauce
20 ml Shaoxing wine
8 g sugar
5 ml toasted sesame oil
2 g ground white pepper

The loaded part

200 g raw prawns, peeled and deveined, tails off
200 g chicken breast, sliced thinly across the grain
150 g char siu BBQ pork, thinly sliced; shop-bought is fine
300 g bok choy, quartered lengthwise
100 g mushrooms, sliced; shiitake if you have them
60 g carrot, sliced into thin coins
60 g bamboo shoots, from a tin, drained (optional)
2 scallions, finely sliced

Method

Make or take out the wontons. This recipe assumes the batch from wonton soup. Frozen ones go straight into boiling water later, no thawing.
Build the broth. Simmer the stock with the ginger coins and smashed garlic for 10 minutes, remove them, then season with the soy sauce, Shaoxing wine, sugar, sesame oil and white pepper. Keep it just below a simmer. Taste it now; this broth is the backbone and everything else is texture.
Poach the chicken in the broth. Slide the sliced chicken into the barely simmering broth and cook 2 to 3 minutes until just opaque, then lift it out with a slotted spoon into a bowl. Poaching gently in the broth seasons the chicken and keeps it tender, where boiling it hard makes it stringy.
Poach the prawns the same way, 60 to 90 seconds, until they just turn opaque and curl into a loose C. A tight O means overcooked. Lift them out to join the chicken.
Cook the vegetables briefly in the broth. Carrot first for 2 minutes, then mushrooms and bamboo for 1 minute, then bok choy for a final minute. Lift each out as it is done. Skim the broth if anything has clouded it.
Boil the wontons in a separate pot of plain water, 4 minutes from fresh or 6 from frozen, until they float with loose translucent skirts.
Assemble in the bowl, not the pot. Wontons in the base, then the chicken, prawns, char siu and vegetables arranged in sections on top. Ladle the hot clear broth over everything and finish with scallions. Building it in the bowl is what makes it look like the restaurant version instead of a stew.

Notes

Wor is a restaurant word, not a regional dish. This bowl belongs to Chinese-Canadian and Chinese-American menus, where it is the deluxe upgrade of plain wonton soup. It is worth saying plainly rather than dressing it up as ancient; it is very good and it is about sixty years old.
Everything is cooked separately for a reason. Prawns, chicken and greens each want a different length of time, and cooking them together guarantees at least one of them is wrong. Poaching them in sequence in the same broth costs nothing extra.
Shop-bought char siu is completely acceptable and is what most people do. If you want to make it, char siu BBQ pork is here and freezes well in slices.
Do not let the broth boil hard at any point once the additions go in. A rolling boil breaks up the prawns and clouds everything.
This does not keep well assembled. Store leftover broth and additions separately and rebuild the bowl when you reheat.

Ingredient substitutions

Shaoxing wine substitutes as elsewhere on this shelf, dry sherry being the closest, mirin acceptable with less sugar, stock plus a splash of rice vinegar for an alcohol-free version.
Char siu can be replaced with any good roast pork, or left out entirely, in which case add a little more chicken and prawn. Sliced Chinese roast duck is a legitimate and excellent swap.
Bok choy can be any Asian green; choy sum, gai lan and napa cabbage all work, with gai lan needing an extra minute.