What is the difference between a wonton and a Rangoon?
What is the purpose of lagoon?
Is crab rangoon a real crab?
What is a Rangoon in Chinese food?
Crab Rangoon, sometimes called crab puffs, crab rangoon puffs, or cheese wontons, are filled crisp dumpling appetizers served primarily in American Chinese restaurants.
Yes, they are very similar to each other. Both cream cheese rangoons and fried wontons use fried wonton wrappers stuffed with cream cheese. The difference is what they are stuffed with. When they have crab, they are called crab rangoons.
The name, too, is emblematic of tiki culture. Rangoon, now Yangon, is the largest city in Myanmar, formerly Burma. The food served in tiki restaurants shared a lot with American Chinese food: vaguely Asian, very sweet, deep-fried. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the cuisines cross-pollinated.
Wontons are a typical Chinese and Cantonese dish, filled with meat and are more often boiled. Rangoons originate from South Asian countries and are deep-fried dumplings and are usually stuffed with crab and cream cheese.
