Plant-Based Baked Wontons

Whether fried or baked and eaten as an appetizer or formed and plopped into some steaming hot broth with Asian veggies, wontons are traditionally a popular comfort food that also happily appears during Chinese New Year celebrations.

Chinese or Lunar New Year 2024, the Year of the Dragon, begins on February 10, the start of the new lunar year, and ends on February 24, the date of the lantern festival. Wontons are one of many symbolic foods, representing prosperity and wealth, enjoyed throughout the two-week holiday period. You can even make preparing the usual huge quantity of wontons into a mini-celebration by bringing family and friends together to help assemble them.

While the wonton wrappers are tasty themselves, it's what’s inside that makes wontons so craveable. This plant-based version consists of Melissa’s Organic Extra Firm Pressed Tofu, shiitake mushrooms, cabbage, green onion, carrots, ginger and garlic, with a splash of hoisin sauce and sesame oil. And although appetizer wontons are most often fried, I’ve gone the baked route here to hopefully please those of you who’ve jumped off the deep-fried bandwagon. In addition to the fact that I’m possibly the only person on planet Earth who doesn’t have an air fryer.

May you enjoy prosperity, wealth and many delicious wontons this coming holiday season.

Plant-Based Baked Wontons

Ingredients
1 package Melissa’s Pressed Tofu, crumbled
8 ounces shiitake mushrooms, diced
1 cup cabbage, diced
4 green onions, diced
1 cup carrots, diced
2 tablespoons ginger, minced
3 cloves garlic, minced
½ cup cilantro, diced
2 tablespoons hoisin sauce
1 ¾ teaspoons sesame oil
Salt & pepper to taste
1 package Melissa’s Wonton Wrappers
Small bowl of water for sealing the wrappers

Preparation

To make the filling, place the first 8 ingredients in a bowl and stir to combine. Add in the hoisin sauce and sesame oil and toss until everything is well coated. Season to taste with salt and pepper and set aside.

Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Put as many wonton wrappers as will fit on the pans. One at a time, dip your finger in water and run a line around the outside of the wrapper. Place 1 teaspoon of filling in the center of each wrapper. Preheat oven to 375 F.

Lift up one corner of each wrapper and fold it over the filling, meeting at the opposite corner. Press the wrapper together around the filling, making sure every edge is sealed, forming a triangle.

When you’ve made enough filled wontons to fit onto both pans, lightly spray each wonton with cooking oil. Place the wontons in the oven and bake for 5 minutes, then rotate the pans and bake for another 5 minutes until brown around the edges. Move the baked wontons onto cooling racks and repeat the process with the remaining wrappers and filling. (If you don’t want to bake all the wontons you can freeze them in a single layer on a baking sheet and when frozen place them in a freezer bag.)

Serve with your favorite dipping sauce or a simple mixture of one-part sweet chili sauce and one-part light soy sauce. Use extra filling to make fried rice or to put inside lettuce wraps.