Crab Rangoon (with homemade sweet and sour sauce)

Molten cheese in a crispy shell.  Yum!  I've had a craving for these for a few weeks but our local Chinese takeout does a version with practically no crab inside and the cream cheese is oddly sweetened.  Eh. So I've been looking up recipes and, of course, I couldn't find a standard.  So I frankensteined my filling from several recipes in my cookbook collection and from the web.  They turned out beyond my expectations. These little dumplings are really tasty but it's the sweet and sour sauce that really shines.  I could drink it, it's so good. 

For the Crab Rangoon:

1 can of crabmeat (I used Bumblebee Fancy White Crab-- it's probably by the tuna at your store) 

8 oz. cream cheese, softened 

1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce 

1/2 tsp sea salt

1/2 tsp soy sauce

1 T lemon juice (freshly squeezed is soooo much better) 

1 green onion, sliced paper thin 

1/2 tsp white pepper

1 clove of garlic, pressed

 1 pkg of wonton skins

a small dish of water for sealing your rangoons  

oil for frying  (peanut is best, I used corn... it's what I had in the pantry!) 

My thumb snuck in the picture.

Drain your can of crabmeat  in a fine mesh sieve and rinse it with cold  water.  Use the back of a spoon to press out as much liquid as you can.  Mix the crab and all of the ingredients up through the garlic in a bowl.  

You want about a teaspoon of filling in each skin.  How you close and seal the skin around your Crab Rangoon is a whole 'nother issue.

I tried out four different shapes of Rangoon: a simple  foldover triangle, a crown shape kind of like a tortelini, the standard Chinese buffet pinwheel and a pyramid.  The easiest to do, duh, was the simple  foldover, but I didn't think it had a lot of visual appeal.  The crown shape is the triangle where you bring the two points together and pinch them to seal.  The standard buffet pinwheel was harder to accomplish than I thought and was the only shape to open up and leak cheese into my frying oil.  The pyramid wasn't hard to do, stayed shut and looked pretty on the plate.  For the record, in terms of eating, we preferred the foldovers and crowns as delivering the best filling to crust ratio in each bite.

To seal your wonton skins, dip your finger in the water and run along the edges and then just press the skin together.  It works surprisingly well. While you're folding and sealing your bundles of yumminess, try to press out as much of the air inside as you can.  An air bubble in the dumpling will either fill up with hot oil (not tasty) or explode while frying (not fun to clean up).  

I made 20 of these to start and maybe used half of the filling and 1/4 of my package of won ton skins.  I did all of my stuffing and sealing first and then went to fry.  

This is a really crappy picture of frying.  The flash killed it.

Heat fairly deep oil in a large heavy pan.  It would probably be good to do this in a fry daddy or other deep fryer with a basket where you can keep your food submerged.  I had to hover and flip using my spider.  C'est la vie. 

The crab in your filling is already cooked so basically you're frying to cook the shell and it browns up fairly quickly.  I fried four at a time for probably 3 minutes and then drained them on a rack over a cookie sheet.  You could also bake them at 350 for 15-20 minutes if deep frying freaks you out.  

For the Sweet and Sour Sauce

1/3 cup sugar

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 cup white vinegar

3 T soy sauce

2 T sherry

1/4 cup ketchup 

2 T vegetable oil

1 clove of garlic, smashed

1 T of cornstarch dissolved in 1/4 cup of water

1 T sesame oil

1/4 to 1/2 cup of water

What an odd mixture of stuff, right?  I didn't take any pictures of this.  Sorry.

Mix the sugar, salt, vinegar, soy sauce, sherry and ketchup and stir well. 

In a separate container (I used the measuring cup I used to measure the water!) combine the cornstarch slurry and the sesame oil. 

Heat your veggie oil in a small saucepan over medium high heat until hot and add your smooshed garlic clove.  Let it sizzle and turn light brown on both sides.  Add your sugar/vinegar/ketchup mixture and mix well.  Continue to stir until it comes to a boil.  This basically dissolves the sugar so your sauce isn't grainy. 

Turn your heat down and add the cornstarch mixture slowly while you stir.  I was going to fast and ended up with some little cornstarch lumps.  It's not a big deal, I just strained the sauce before I stirred it.  Your sauce is going to get thick.  Now you can slowly add your water a little bit at a time, tasting as you go, until your sauce is the consistency and concentration of flavor that you prefer.  I used a full half cup of water and my sauce is a little on the thin side. 

I immediately ladled out sauce into dipping bowls because I figured it would cool off faster (right out of the pot, this stuff is like napalm!) and I was hungry.  The sauce will keep in the fridge for a couple of weeks.  I'm told you can also freeze it without changing the flavor or texture.

Hey!  Look at the cheesy crabby filling. 
As soon as this picture was taken, I ate it.

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