This Is Wishbone Kitchen’s Easy Trader Joe’s Dinner

If you’ve scrolled through food videos on TikTok in the past few years, it’s likely that you’ve come across clips from Meredith Hayden (@wishbonekitchen) or her series spotlighting a day in the life of a private chef. And if you’re not familiar yet, the glimpses she gives into her glamorous yet intense career will undoubtedly intrigue you. 

Despite her work for high-profile clients in the Hamptons, this chef’s home cooking remains surprisingly relatable. Hayden likes to keep it real for her followers when it comes to quick, at-home meals. She admits that even as a professional chef and recipe developer, she doesn’t always feel like cooking from scratch.

Recently, amidst an ongoing press tour for her upcoming cookbook, she posted a TikTok video on how to make her go-to five-minute Trader Joe’s meal using a fan-favorite item: Trader Joe’s Chicken Cilantro Mini Wontons. 

This four-ingredient meal — which Hayden notes she’s been making for years — features chicken wontons in a nearly instant, warm, spicy, and flavorful broth. As the chef details, it’s essentially a quick wonton soup that relies on Trader Joe’s frozen chicken wontons for the main event.

The California-based grocery store chain has a variety of popular frozen dumplings, ranging from soup dumplings to shumai, which represent just a few of the many frozen meal options available at the supermarket. While Trader Joe’s dumplings and wontons aren’t exactly like traditional Chinese dumplings, they remain accessible and affordable. 

In the video, Hayden explains that she’s often asked about her favorite recipes for breakfast or dinner at home. Although many viewers might expect her usual meals to resemble something straight out of her cookbook, the chef says, “I know I’m supposed to be promoting the book but if I’m being honest, when I’m alone and I’m cooking for myself, I am probably cooking something like this.”

What ingredients do you need? 

As the private chef promises, this is truly an easy and convenient meal that requires only four ingredients. The star of the show is, of course, the Chicken Cilantro Mini Wontons, which you can find in the freezer aisle of Trader Joe’s.

According to the packaging, the filling for these morsels includes chicken, cabbage, green onion, soybean flour, cilantro, bean thread (thin, transparent noodles typically made from mung beans or, in this case, sweet potato starch), soy sauce, sugar, salt, and black pepper — all encased in a wheat wrapper.

For Hayden’s simple soup base, she uses three of her staple pantry ingredients: chicken bouillon, the Korean fermented chili paste gochujang (specifically Mother In Law’s garlic gochujang), and soy sauce, although ponzu can be used to replace the latter.

How do you make this five-minute meal? 

To start, we recommend having all four ingredients on your counter to make the process smoother. Once you have everything you need, start by heating some water. After it has come to a boil, pour in as many frozen mini wontons as desired.

While the wontons are boiling, add approximately one teaspoon — Hayden measures with her heart for this recipe — of chicken bouillon into a serving bowl. Hayden uses Wegman’s brand chicken bouillon but notes that “Historically I’ve used Better Than Bouillon. Super yummy, really convenient.”

Next, she adds about one teaspoon of garlic gochujang to the same bowl. (The private chef mentions using this particular gochujang often as a marinade, in fried rice, or “whenever and however” she can.)

Once the wontons have been boiling for about two minutes, turn the heat off. Next, into the same bowl as the gochujang and bouillon, Hayden scoops a ladleful or two of the hot water from the pot of wontons. Using a fork, she mixes everything together until the bouillon dissolves and the gochujang is fully incorporated into the water. 

While continuously mixing and adding more wonton water into the bowl, make sure to taste your soup base for any necessary adjustments. If you like it extra spicy, you can add more garlic gochujang — which is what I did when testing the recipe. After tasting the broth, Hayden decides the soup needs some salt. For a salty component that also adds more flavor, she uses either soy sauce or ponzu, depending on what’s in the pantry. 

Following one last taste test, she decides the soup base is “fabulous” and transfers the wontons from the pot to the soup bowl as the final step. “The cilantro in the wontons really makes this feel like it’s not a freezer meal,” she says, before showing six other bags of Trader Joe’s chicken wontons stocked in her freezer. 

After making this recipe and tasting my first sip of Hayden’s wonton soup, I also wish I had six bags of these mini wontons in my fridge. The private chef wraps up the TikTok video perfectly with a simple, “Thanks Trader Joe — I love these little guys.”