Crab Rangoons

I LOVE American-Chinese food. Even when I was living in China for years I would still get a craving for some orange chicken or crab rangoons. These little stuffed and fried wontons are crazy addicting and so tasty. Not to mention much more cost effective to make at home!

For any recipe that involves wonton wrappers I will always suggest just buying them. It seriously isn’t worth the hassle to make your own. Although you could always use a pasta roller, it just takes an unnecessary amount of time, and frozen tastes the exact same.

Crab Rangoons Ingredients

The filling of these crab rangoons is super easy to make – it takes just a few minutes to put together. In fact, most of the time will be spent folding up the wrappers, but that is quite relaxing and meditative in my opinion.

Ingredients List

• 15 sheets Wonton Wrappers – depending on how you fill you might need up to 20, but that is okay – just means more delicious crab rangoons! Any leftovers can be used for SO MANY RECIPES, like authentic pork wontons or even Americanized Chinese chicken salad.
• 190 grams (about 6.5 ounces) Crab Meat – I suggest buying jarred or tinned lump crab meat as it is way more convenient than boiling and breaking open fresh crab every time you want to make some rangoons.
• 85 grams (about 3 ounces) Cream Cheese – Philadelphia highly recommended
• 10 cm (about 4 inches) Leek – very thinly sliced.
• 1 tbsp Soy Sauce
• 1/2 tsp Salt
• 1/2 tsp Black Pepper – freshly cracked
• Oil – for frying

How To Make Crab Rangoons

In a large bowl mash together all of the ingredients except the wonton wrappers and the oil. Make sure to drain the crab completely before adding otherwise the filling will be far too wet.

Prepare your workstation. I like to do this on a floured surface so the rangoons don’t stick and rip when I lift them up. The wrapper dough is thin so be careful not to use two at once.

Place a sheet of wonton wrapper in your hand and spoon a heaping teaspoon of filling right in the middle.

Fold the wrapper first in a triangle, touching two points together. Then bring in the other two points to make a sort of triangular prism. I suggest dabbing a bit of water on the edges to help them seal better. Also, try to squeeze as much air out as possible when you close the rangoons.

When all your rangoons are done you can start frying them. Wonton wrapper dough fries extremely fast, so you only need a few seconds for each one. If you have plenty of leftover wrappers you don’t know what to do with, I like to slice them up and fry them as a topper for things like my Chinese chicken salad!

I like to use a slotted ladle or a ‘spider’ when deep frying. This allows you to submerge the crab rangoon in the oil and easily lift it out. I usually dip the rangoon in the oil 3 times at 2-3 seconds each.

Place the fried crab rangoon on a paper towel lined plate so the excess oil can drip away. When you are finished with them all you can plate and serve them alongside a variety of sauces.

Tips & Tricks

• If you don’t want to splurge on real crab then feel free to use imitation crab. Any leftover fake crab can be used for things like crab salad.
• These are also known as crab puffs or cheese puffs, the latter only use herbed cream cheese which is an option if you want to keep these vegetarian.
• It is best to only remove the wonton wrappers right before you start filling them. Otherwise they have a tendency to dry out.