A few weeks ago I made J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s Sichuan-Style Hot and Sour Wontons (Suanla Chaoshou) recipe from The Wok.

The wonton filling is ground pork, salt, sugar, white pepper, minced scallions, minced garlic, and Shaoxing wine. Kenji specifically calls for ground pork shoulder for the pork. I just used the regular ground pork at Your DeKalb Farmers Market.

All of that gets mixed together, and then wontons are made with it. This went a bit easier without a chunk of shrimp in there like for The Best Wonton Soup.

The wontons are boiled, and tossed with “Hot and Sour chile sauce.” This is a sauce made of Sichuan Málà (Hot and Numbing) Chile Oil, roasted sesame oil, chinkiang vinegar, soy sauce, sugar, minced garlic, and sesame seeds. I’ve gone back to using The Woks of Life chili oil recipe. It’s just a bit less of a chore without using whole dried chiles, and it tastes just as good to me.

The sauced wontons are sprinkeld with peanuts and cilantro, and that’s it!

These were a winner for us. My vegetarian daughter didn’t have any, but my wife, son, and I all enjoyed them. I made half a batch to use the leftover wonton wrappers from The Best Wonton Soup (~20 wrappers), and we could have easily eaten all of them. I put four aside for leftovers and Megan ate them for lunch the next day.

I am cooking my way through J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook. Read more about it.