If you have ever gone to a Chinese restaurant or Chinese market or even Costco, you must have seen this very well known appetizer – egg rolls! Why should we spend extra money on those pre-made egg rolls that comes with a bunch of unnatural ingredients and fillers when we can make them quick and easy with this recipe.
As a Chinese tradition, people eat egg rolls on the first day of spring (hence they are often known as spring rolls). Eating egg rolls and sharing them with family on that day means praying for good health for the whole year.
There is also another source tells a possible origin of spring rolls. Some say that for past generations, people are very thrifty and they will wrap their leftover in rice paper, fry them which turned them into another dish. That is very smart isn’t it?
Home made frying typically is not very cost effective compared to buying out because the frying oil goes bad pretty quickly due to excess liquid or batter that falls into the oil. However, if you are like me, who loves to fry things, spring rolls turn out to be the perfect dish that you can enjoy fried food while extending the lifespan of your frying oil.
Now let’s see how to make this super delicious dish! I promise you it easier than you think!
You can wrap whatever you want into egg rolls! It’s a perfect dish to exercise your culinary creativity. Here, I’m just going to go over a typical egg roll recipe.
Egg Rolls Ingredients:
- 1/4 cabbage (about 0.5 lbs)
- 1 onion
- 1 bundle of dried vermicelli soaked in water (recommend LongKou Vermicelli)
- 1/2 to 1 cup of shredded carrot
- 1 pound of ground pork
- 1 bag of thawed egg roll wrappers (approx. 25)
- 1 egg white
Seasoning:
- 1 tbsp of soy sauce (you can adjust to your taste)
- 1 pinch of white pepper
- 1 pinch of hondashi
Instead of lots of ground pork, I personally love to have a lot of vegetables. The crunchiness of egg rolls will be made even better if you have crispy vegetable in it. In this case I put shredded cabbage, carrot and onions.
Vermicelli might not be a very familiar ingredient to most of you. It basically is a kind of noodle that is made with green beans. It can sometimes be called glass noodle as well. When you buy them from the market, it is dried. You have to soak them into water for about 15 minutes to soften. After wards, use scissors to cut it into short pieces.
Usually people will cook the filling first to ensure it’s fully cooked after they are fried. Here is also something that you can modify. Considering that frying is also part of cooking, you can under cook the filling or even not cook the filling inside. However, it’s always always recommended that you cook the meat products thoroughly 🙂
Stir fry ground pork until it is well done, and then you can put in the rest of the ingredient and cook it until the way you like it! (Please mind that frying will cook it even more!)
For wrapping your egg roll, it’s exactly how you would wrap a burrito similar to what you see at Chipotle 🙂 If you want to see how it is done, here is the super simple diagram for you (click to enlarge).
If you have some other dishes that needs egg yokes then it will be great because you definitely going to need some egg white here. Egg white is the perfect “glue” for our egg rolls. However, you do not need that much. One egg white is good enough to glue about 25 spring rolls.
Since I do not have all those fancy thermometer to check the oil temperature. One of the best way to know if the oil is hot enough is to stick a wooden chopstick into your oil and see if it starts bobbling. If it does, you are ready to fry!
Careful slide in your raw egg rolls. DO NOT THROW IT IN or you will splash the oil all over. Gently put them into oil and in about 5 seconds it should start to bubble heavily. Don’t forget to use long utensils to handle them such as wooden chopsticks or tongs!
Pro tip: DO NOT let raw egg rolls sit for too long! Humidity is the key to beautiful spring rolls. It it’s too dry, it might get burned while frying, but if it’s too wet, you will have ugly and uneven surfaces. The best way to keep your uncooked spring rolls is to either fry them right away and use a slightly damp cloth to cover them or freeze it for future use.
I personally recommend this egg rolls dipping sauce!
There you go! Enjoy the awesome home-made egg rolls!
- ¼ cabbage (about 0.5 lbs)
- 1 onion
- 1 bundle of dried vermicelli soaked up (suggest LongKou Vermicelli)
- ½ to 1 cup of shredded carrot
- 1 pound of ground pork
- 1 bag of approx. 25 egg roll wrappers (thawed)
- 1 egg white
- 1 tbl of soysauce (please adjust to your taste)
- 1 pinch of white pepper
- 1 pinch of hondashi
- Soak dried vermicelli for more than 15 min or until it's soften
- Lightly cut the soaked vermicelli with scissors (easier to cook)
- Shred all vegetables
- Stir fry ground pork to fully cooked
- Stir fry the rest of the ingredient, add seasoning
- Wrap egg rolls
- Prepare the oil to the right temperature
- Fry until egg rolls are golden brown
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