Popular cooking magazines have misled us. Those magazines always use pre-packaged wonton wrappers as a “short-cut” for making delicious, easy, and impressive looking appetizers. Somehow the fact that these recipes never suggest that you make your own wrappers led me to believe that there must be some great mystery to making wontons.
There is not!
Wonton wrappers are actually a simple mixture of flour, egg, salt, and water. I’ve used xanthan gum in my dough, though I’m not at all sure that it’s necessary. (That’s an experiment for another day.) The flours that I’ve used are brown rice flour, corn starch, and sorghum flour. Feel free to substitute tapioca starch or potato starch for the corn starch. If you cannot use egg, then try a flax egg instead. The only special equipment that you’ll need is a rolling pin.
So what is important to know about making gluten free wontons? The only aspect of it that you may find to be difficult is rolling the dough out. Luckily you will improve with practice. And if you’re frying whatever you’re making, then you can use plenty of flour to roll our your dough, which will make the process much easier.
These wontons can be rolled out into circular or rectangular shapes, and I’ll explain how to get the two different shapes in the videos.
The wonton dough can be refrigerated for a few days. And the rolled out wrappers can, theoretically, be frozen and used at a later date. I haven’t tried this yet, as we always seem to use up all of the dough that I make. However, freezing the wrappers may be very useful if you need to make a lot ahead of time for a party. From what I’ve read, all you need to do to freeze them is stack the rolled out wrappers with a little cornstarch (or tapioca or potato starch) sprinkled in between. And then wrap them up well in saran wrap and a freezer bag. When you are ready to use them, place them in the refrigerator for approximately 12 hours to thaw.
Okay, I think that’s all you need to know to get started. Wonton wrappers really are deceptively simple. Now it’s time to watch the first of the videos and get started on these recipes yourself. John and I chatted a lot more during the filming for this course, so I hope that you’ll find it a tad more interesting and informative =)
What is a flax egg?
@Sharon: A flax egg is made by mixing 1 Tbsp ground flax seed with 3 Tbsp. hot water and letting it sit for a minute. Freshly ground flax seed works the best. One flax egg may be substituted for 1 large chicken eggs. Flax eggs are a good egg substitute in recipes that call for 1 or two eggs.
Hi Mary! I noticed you use xanthan gum in your recipies. What does it do and can it be substituted for another ingredient?
Hi Jocelyn: Xanthan gum is a binder and I use it in many recipes to add the structure that is missing when you bake with gluten-free flours. Not all recipes require it. There are other binders that are available – like guar gum. Some gluten free recipe writers use various ground seed mixtures or sticky rice flour (also called glutinous rice flour or sweet rice flour) to produce the same effect.
@Jocelyn: And as to substitutes, if the recipe calls for xanthan gum then other aspects of the recipe would need to be adjusted if you want to leave it out.