Squash Potstickers

This fall my CSA box has included many butternut squash. I’m not a huge fan of eating any kind of winter squash cooked and mashed. So I’ve been looking for different kinds of recipes to make squash in different and appetizing ways. Tonight, I decided to explorer the concept of make squash wontons or potstickers. I took my inspiration from two different recipes:

• Baked Squash Wontons with Ginger Dipping Sauce
• Baked Crispy Butternut Squash Wontons
• Kabocha Squash and Shiitake Wontons with Pomegranate-Vinegar Syrup

Because I was planning on serving these as an appetizer with a meal that was a Thai red curry beef, I didn’t want my wontons to include cheese. So I used a combination of the ingredients from several recipes but the cooking technique from another recipe. Here is what I ended up with.

Makes 20 wontons

• 1 cup pureed butternut squash
• 1/2 cup shiitake mushrooms
• 1/2 cup cremini mushrooms
• 2 green onions cut into 4 pieces
• 2 tbs soy sauce
• 1 tsp ginger paste
• 1 tsp minced garlic
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• 1 tbs sesame seeds
• 20 wonton skins cut so square

1. Put the squash, mushrooms, onion, soy sauce, ginger, garlic, sesame oil into food processor and puree until smooth
2. Place 3/4 teaspoon of mix into center of wonton skin fold skin diagonally to make a triangle and crimp edges
3. Place wonton on baking sheet lined with parchment.
4. When all wontons are on sheet spray with cooking spray
5. Bake at 375 degree on convection bake for 5 minutes
6. Turn wontons bake 5 more minutes.

Technically you can fry these in a pan if you wanted to. They come out a little crispier and should be place on paper towels to drain/remove the grease. You need a deep fat fryer to do this or a pan that has enough oil in it to cover the wontons. The oil should be at 375 degrees. However, if you don’t want to directly measure the temperature, take a 1/4 of a wonton skin and drop into the oil. When the skin starts bubble and cook the oil is up to temperature. Add wontons to the pan a few at a time. You don’t want to crowd the pan while you fry them. Be super careful frying these if you use a pan. They brown pretty quick and you need to flip them to brown both sides. You don’t want to burn yourself with the grease as you work to cook them. You can see from the picture below that the pan fried ones come up crispy.

Overall I thought these were pretty flavorful but they really should have been served with a dipping sauce a smidge more salt. The upside is I have a lot of squash to try another batch where I tweak the recipe. I also could have chosen to put these on a pan and freeze them for future use. Likely I’ll do that with some in the next batch I make.