Hot and Sour Lamb Wonton Soup

Spicy Soup for Dreary Cold Sad Days

On Tuesday, my usual soupletter day, instead of doing anything I planned, I laid in bed all day watching I Dream of Jeannie eating Fazio’s pizza. I’m missing Xi’an hand pulled noodle lamb cumin soup. I’m missing Wu’s Wonton King wonton soup. I’m missing any and all hot pot or Korean BBQ experiences. Spicy Village. Kun Jip. My last inside restaurant experience was a BangBang (two dinners one right after the other) at Nom Wah and Joe’s Shanghai. This soup is not anything from any one of those places but it pretty accurately EVOKES all of those things.

There are three parts to this soup: the wontons (based off this Serious Eats recipe), the spiced vinegar (from here), and the broth. Shout out to my friend Beth for taking me to H Mart and Siam Market (Bushwick! go!) so I could get specialty ingredients, but honestly I did not use anything too crazy here. The original wonton recipe calls for pork, but really you could use any ground meat. I went in a cumin-lamb direction but it’s all flexible.

spicy lamb cumin wonton soup

Wontons

• 1 pound ground lamb

• 2 teaspoons kosher salt

• 1 teaspoon cumin, crushed the side of a knife

• 1 teaspoon finely ground pepper

• 1 1/2 ounces minced scallions or Chinese chives (about 2 scallions)

• 2 teaspoons minced fresh garlic (about 2 medium cloves)

• 2 teaspoons mirin

• 40 thin square wonton wrappers (however many it takes! less than one pack)

Mix all the ingredients together except the wonton wrappers. Put 1/2 tablespoon of filling into one wonton wrapper, then wet the edge of the wrapper and fold into a triangle. Bring the two corners of the long side of the triangle to meet. I am not professional wonton wrapper, I am sure I am not doing it correctly. I recommend googling.

Spiced Vinegar

• 1.5 cup of vinegar

• 1/2 cup of water

• 1 tbsp of brown sugar

• 1/2 tsp of cumin seeds

• 1 piece of cinnamon stick

• 1/2 tsp of fennel seeds

• 3 pieces of clove

• 1 piece of bay leaf

• 2 cloves of garlic

• 2 pieces of dried chilies

• 1 tsp of Sichuan peppercorn

In a clean pot, add all the ingredients bring the pot to a light simmer. Keep it at low heat. Let it simmer for 15 minutes and reduce 30% of the liquid. You don’t need to measure it exactly, just eyeball it. You should have about 1.5 cups of liquid left in there. Turn off the heat. Strain into a bowl, discarding the spices, to cool.

Broth and assembly

• 1 glug of sesame oil

• 2 inch knob of ginger, minced

• an equivalent amount of minced garlic (8 cloves)

• 1 bunch of scallions, thinly sliced

• broth, any kind, I used chicken

• soy sauce

• cabbage, sliced

• greens (I used spinach + kale combo)

• Spicy Crunchy Chili Oil, your favorite, the hip favorite is Fly by Jing

• chives

Take a glug of sesame oil and sweat the ginger, garlic, and scallion for a few minutes and then add 8 cups of broth and a tablespoon of soy sauce. I’ve been using and loving Better than Bouillon, and for this I did 8 cups of water to 2 tablespoons of btb. Adjust seasoning to taste and bring to a boil. Add dumplings (not all of them! freeze extra, only cook as many as you want to eat at a time) and cabbage and cook for about 3 minutes. Assemble the soup as you like in each bowl: first I put a bunch of spinach in the soup bowl, then added the broth and dumplings, then topped with a tablespoon or two of the spiced vinegar and the chili oil of your choice, to taste. Top w chives and eat!