Crab Rangoon Fried Wonton

hello! Hi everyone, Wesley here. Today we’re diving back into our series dedicated to deconstructing Americanized Chinese cuisine with a shot at the crab wontons or “Crab Rangoon,” from PF Chang’s. For those new to the channel, in this series, we have been deconstructing iconically Americanized dishes from Chinese cuisine, and seeing what it might look like if we were to cook the dish through the lens of more traditional Chinese wok cooking. For those unfamiliar, crab rangoon is a wonton dumpling dish commonly found in American Chinese cuisine on the small bites menu which features a cream cheese and crab based filling, that is deep-fried for a crispy finish. Since wonton wrappers contain egg, they then puff up and blister very nicely in a deep-fry, not unlike an eggroll (some may know that a wonton wrapper is essentially just an eggroll wrapper, cut into a smaller shape). 

Crab Rangoon, not unlike a number of other American Chinese dishes like Mongolian Beef and Singapore Street Noodles, actually has no real affiliation with Rangoon, (which is the capital of a region in Myanmar or Burma), and in fact was invented here in the states. So, I will preface this all by saying that there really is only so much that we can do with a dish that contains cream cheese, which is just about the most American thing that you can fit into a dish. For our version today though we’re going to be drawing some inspiration from a few of my favorite more traditional Chinese dumpling recipes that we’ve done in the last few years, and include a number of aromatic veggies and spices to bring our wontons to life, this today will be some white pepper, chili crisp oil, and baby bok choy, in lieu of the bell pepper that the PF Chang’s version calls for. Hope you try it.