Baked Wontons and a Bonus!

I mentioned before that I got a few cookbooks for Mother’s Day.  On like page 2, I saw a recipe for crispy baked wontons.  It was a must!  They looked great, and they were healthy.   This was the first on my long list of must try’s from this Taste of Home, Healthy Cooking cookbook. 

Once I had all the ingredients, I set to work.  These are a little labor intensive.  Any time you have mini filled things, you know it is going to take awhile.  But I was prepared, after all, they were wontons!  I am pretty sure this is a very Americanized version, but we enjoyed them.  They made the coveted, Will Make Again list.  They would work well as party appetizers, but we weren’t going  to wait for a party to try them.  And they were perfect.  You could easily freeze some instead of baking them all right away.  And when you have leftover Wonton wrappers, be sure to try Dessert Wontons! 

Crispy Baked Wontons

From Taste of Home Healthy Cooking

Printable Recipe

½ lb ground pork

½ lb pound ground turkey

1 small onion chopped

1 can water chestnuts, drained and finely chopped

1/3 cup reduced sodium soy sauce

¼ cup egg substitute

1 ½ tsp ground ginger

1 pkg wonton wrappers

In a large skillet cook the pork, turkey, and onion until the meat is cooked through.  Drain.  In a large bowl mix together the meat, water chestnuts, soy sauce, egg substitute and ginger.  Now if you don’t have egg substitute you could just use 1 regular egg.  Or even leave it out.  I am not sure it did much.  I ended up with a soup at the bottom of my meat,.  So next time, I am going to put the soy sauce in with the meat during the last few minutes of cooking, and just leave the egg out. 

Then comes the wrapping.   It is kind of hard to explain, so check out the pictures for the examples.  Lay one wrapper down at an angle.  Put in about 2 tsp of filling.  You have to play around with the amount to make it work for you.  Too much, and they don’t fold up well.   Moisten all the edges with water.  

Fold over the 2 sides.  

Starting at the bottom roll up to seal.  This isn’t how the book described, so you can mess around and see what works for you. 

 Place all the wontons on a lined baking sheet.  Spray them with cooking spray and bake at 400 degrees for 10 – 12 minutes.  I turned on the broiler the last minute to get them more brown and crispy.  

Serve with Sweet and Sour Sauce for dipping.  My super picky 6 year old even ate a couple (he dipped his in ranch)!  Huge success!

Bonus!!

What to do with the other ½ pound of turkey and pork – turn into a burger! 

I just mixed the pork and turkey with about 2 Tbls of Onion Soup Mix and 1 Tbls Ranch Dressing mix (great combo for beef burgers as well). 

 

 Form into patties.  

Grill for about 7 minutes per side, and top as you would a normal beef hamburger – they were very juicy and yummy!

 

Have a great week! 

Finally Spring

It is finally starting to feel a little like spring.  It has been a long time coming this year in Iowa.  We went from 80's one weekend, to snowing the next!  And since, it has just been rainy, windy, and cold!  So this weekend when it was finally sunny and in the 60's it was time to celebrate!  Despite the cold the grass has grown, and was in desperate need of mowing.  That meant moving the garage around (move snowblower to the back, lawn mower and bikes to the front).  After all of that, picking up about 500 sticks on the lawn, and finally mowing....it was time for a spring meal.  I was breaking out the grill!  Hamburgers and pasta salad.....can't get any more summer in my mind. 

Now my husband has started to sound like my son "Are you going to blog about hamburgers?  Everyone can make a hamburger at home."  Again, I am sure he is right.  But I am not a chef, I make everyday food.  I do enjoy trying new recipes (quite a few planned for this next week), but we eat normal food, and this blog is about what I cook.  So I will blog about burgers! 

Hamburgers
Printable Recipe

1 pound ground beef (I use 93% lean, because of calories, but more fat = more flavor)
1 Tbls Worchestershire Sauce
1/4 of a small onion
Salt & Pepper

Mix everything together in a bowl.  I like to use a hand-held grater to grate the onion in.  This gives you the advantages of onion (moisture, extra flavor), but you aren't biting down on chunks of onion.  My son won't eat it if he can see them, so this works well for him. Once everything is mixed together, form into patties.  You want to be careful not to over mix the meat.  Form the patties with a well in the middle, so they don't balloon up into balls on the grill. 

 

Put on a hot grill, for about 10-12 minutes, depending on how done you like them.  We like just a little pink on the inside, so closer to 5 minutes a side.  You can toast the buns on the top rack of the grill, or off to the side for the last few minutes of grilling. 

While they are cooking, get your toppings ready.  I LOVE Avocado's and will use any excuse to eat them.  They are great on burgers.  When I first met my husband he didn't really enjoy Avocado's, but I have converted him!