雲吞

The characters 雲吞 for wonton literally mean cloud swallows which is a nice rebranding -- long ago the name evolved from 餛飩 which is pronounced the same in Cantonese and means chaos, alluding to how wonton was enclosed without a way to breathe.

Wonton are typically deep-fried or boiled and served in soup. The literal translation cloud swallows alludes to how the wonton float in soup with the skin billowing (according to Grace Young in The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen, wontons made correctly should be “heavenly morsels”).

Cooking Tips

You can buy wonton skins (squares) from Asian grocery stores.

Categories:

雲吞

Yale:

wàhn tān

Jyutping:

wan6 tan1