Hello! This post will be about crunchy, delicious egg rolls! Before that, I wanted to say that I turned my salads and chocolate post into handy dandy prints!
Chocolates and Tempering Print
Salads Print
I also have other stuff sold at my Society6 page too. Thanks and enjoy this post :)
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My mom would enlist my help as a kid (ie: free labor and there's nothing wrong with that) when she'd make her egg rolls.
Her egg rolls are really, really good. Her friends love them and she is known for them. In no way do I claim for them to be truly authentic (considering she immigrated from Vietnam, I don't really care if they are). Whatever they are, she adapted them from her mom and they are really good.
She gave me the very fun task of exercising fine motor skills of tearing apart the incredibly delicate spring roll skins from the brick of existing ones. When I was a kid, this felt like an exercise in frustration, a step up from shelling pounds of shrimp for my mom and removing that little "line" from the body.
That's one of the things that makes these egg rolls really tasty. It is almost a creepy, Buffalo Bill skin-like texture of the spring roll skins that make them crispy crunchy--not floury, puffy or thick.
You can tell you've picked the right ones if one spring roll skin is whisper thin and translucent, like these guys. Scroll down to Spring Roll Wraps. Those are the droids you're looking for. Click here for image!
They come frozen and you have to heat them for about 30 seconds to a minute to loosen them up. As a kid my mom took particular delight and sometimes frustration at seeing me inevitably muck the first few up prying them apart from the thawing brick.
My mom would then step in and show me how to do it properly. With her years of experience on mine, she made it look easy. She'd pull, gently tug at a corner with one hand and somehow flick her wrist and the skin would easily fly up, freed from the brick.
Later on, I first made my mom's egg rolls for a few of my friends and Tubbs.
They really liked it.
They wanted me to make them as much as possible.
There's a reason I don't like making them. While they are tasty, I'm in no way good at frying them. The sizzle and crackle of oil leaping everywhere as you gently lower those suckers into the pan is still slightly stressful. I should probably take a few tips from Steamy Kitchen's excellent post on egg rolls.
They also stink up the house. Now you might think that's a good thing, but after that smell (or any food type smell for that matter) lingers for a week it becomes more than a little unpleasant.
Not to mention the rolling. I just spent 4 hours the other day cranking out 75 of them. I thought I should take my trough of 5 lbs of meat and skins to the dining table and make A Game of Thrones marathon out of it, but I decided against it and used it as a meditation therapy instead.
I became zen-like, trying to peel and pluck the skins from the skin brick then roll them as quickly and neatly as I could. Eventually I was pulling the spring roll skins as quick as my mom, finally getting it. After still, messing up the first few tugs at the spring roll brick.
However, after taking them out of the hot oil, letting them cool on a cookie rack and rolling it up in a crisp leaf of lettuce and dipping it into fish sauce, I decided maybe these are worth making.
The ingredients for these egg rolls are really basic. This is an adaptation of my mother's recipe so it's even further distilled down to a handful of ingredients.
The food list is as follows: spring roll skins, carrots, onions, green cabbage, oyster sauce, eggs, lean ground pork, and cracked black pepper. Also, a few cartons of canola oil for frying.
Accompaniments: fish sauce, sugar, white vinegar and water (to make fish sauce), crisped red leaf lettuce (read my Salads post..eh? :D), cucumbers, cilantro, and mint.
Equipment: at least 2 inch thick pan for frying, a pair of chopsticks or metal tongs, vegetable peeler, cutting board, chef's knife, a cookie sheet wrapped with aluminum and a wire rack on top, and a food processor (for your sanity), colander, a few plastic ware at least 9 inches width and 4-6 inches high, and at least 75 pieces of parchment paper cut up, large container (holds 40 cups or 9.4 l) .
optional: chile paste, lime juice, lemon juice, siracha, chopped shallots and chopped garlic for more moxie
Throw everything into a small pot, heat on low heat and stir occassionally until sugar is fully dissolved. Taste. Add more stuff to your liking. Store in glass jar and be careful not to spill any on you, because it stinks.
Eggrolls: makes approximately 70 slightly chubby egg rolls
-2, 50 count packages of Spring Roll Pastry, frozen (keep them in the freezer)
-6 eggs at room temperature
-2 3/4 c Oyster Sauce (you'll need about 2 18 oz bottles)
-5 lbs of lean ground pork (90% lean)
-lots of freshly ground black pepper
-2 cartons of oil for frying
So about the ground pork--I grabbed 70% ground pork and it has a silkier, richer texture but doesn't have the tang and oomph that is normally present when I make them. You can choose to make it with 70% fat but I prefer the leaner stuff.
I like to get my little ducks in a row, so first thing we're going to do is prep all of those vegetables. The most bothersome being the carrots. Peel all of your carrots, then chop off the ends. Wash thoroughly in the colander and then wipe dry.
Use the grate attachment of your food processor, or use a box grater, and grate all of the carrots.
Empty them out into the large container.
On to the cabbage. Peel outer skin and discard. Cut the cabbage in half. Remove the core.
Cut again into quarters. Then, cut horizontally into 8 small pieces per quarter.
Using the food processor again, throw the cabbages pieces in the shredder until they are all finely grated. If you don't have a food processor, you can chop them up finely with a chef's knife.
Throw the cabbage in with the carrots in the massive food trough.
On to the onions! Cut the onions in half, and then cut the tops off. Then peel all of the skins, and chop finely.
Try not to cry like a little baby in the process. I consistently fail at this part.
Throw them into the food trough with the carrots and cabbages.
At this point, it's a good break for clean-up. I usually wash everything up (the food processor, knives, cutting boards and vegetable peeler) and dry it and put it away.
A certain someone, that oh I dunno, will remain unnamed, likes to cook as if an atom bomb exploded in the kitchen.
The certain someone can cook some pretty darn well so it always slides that you could hide a dead body in the aftermath. I still brace myself before peering into the kitchen.
I like cleaning up as I cook.
With the vegetables prep finished comes the more fun stuff. Crack all 6 eggs into a large bowl, then tip them into the food trough.
Measure out the Oyster sauce (if you haven't already) and also tip into the food trough.
Add some crack blacked pepper, maybe 20 turns or so of the pepper grinder.
At this point, if you might want to swap into a slightly crappy short sleeved shirt or whip an apron on. Wash your hands and then tear open the pork and add that to the massive trough.
With your bare hands, get all up in there and mix it thoroughly by hand. Swoop your arm down in there and squish the meat, eggs, oyster sauce and veggies all together until it is one homogeneous mixture. This make take a few minutes and some elbow grease.
Wash your hands.
Now dip a teaspoon sized amount out of the massive glob and plop it onto a microwave safe plate.
Nuke it in the microwave for 30 to 40 seconds (always err on the lower side of cooking times).
With a fork, cut open the meat and make sure it's thoroughly cooked, no pink(if it's still pink, nuke it in 5 second spurts so it doesn't burn). Wait a few seconds to cool.
Taste.
Add more black pepper or oyster sauce to your desired taste. The heating of a tiny bit of meat mixture makes it easy for me to know what it will taste like. The measurements I provided are to my own taste, so adjust for yours or even add other stuff if you so choose.
Have your meat trough ready with a plate and a tablespoon nearby. Have a big, clear working counter space. Line your sheet pan with aluminum and put a wire rack on it. Have a few Tupperware containers at hand and your parchment pieces ready. Also have a plate large enough to hold the spring roll skins.
Here comes the fun part! Rolling and picking out those finicky skins one by one from their defrosting, clumped brick. I'll do my best to describe how to pry those skins apart from one another.
First, take one of the packages of frozen spring rolls and put it directly into the microwave oven. Don't open the bag, don't cut it, just throw it in there.
Nuke it for about 30 seconds.
Nuke it for about 10-15 more seconds.
Cut open the package and discard. Place your clump of spring roll skins onto a plate.
Look at one of the corners.
This is where you will pick and flick with your fingernail like a scab, the very first spring roll skin. Find space between the dough and dig gently with your finger and your fingernail--don't tear, just flick.
With your thumb and index finger, very, very gently tug back in the opposite direction.
The stack of spring roll skins are still defrosting, so the first bunch of skins are going to still be rigid and difficult to pry apart without tearing. It's okay if you tear a few (I certainly did).
What you're going to want to do next is with your thumbs and index fingers grab the skin, and pull and tug gently in very, very tiny increments, with the most resistance being at the base where the skin is closest to the rest of the stack, in the opposite direction.
Use your thumb underneath one side of the skin, with the rest of your fingers on the top side, to brush up against the bottom of the stack to loosen the skin from the rest, making sure to gently, in small tugs, pull, pull, pull at the corners and the center as well of the skin.
I hope the images help. After you get the first one done and pulled (with no tears hopefully, if not don't sweat it. Try again and remember the skin is desperately clinging on to dear life to avoid being the vessel for porky goodness) place it in diamond shape, with a corner facing you.
Filling time. Take your tablespoon and scoop into the meat mixture about 2-3 TB generous meat and place it just half an inch from the corner of the spring roll closest towards you.
Shape it into a log with the back of your spoon by mushing it around.
Now take that corner closest towards you and turn it so that it folds on top of the meat mixture.
Place each hand on one side of the egg roll. With your thumbs, cradle the bottom and roll the spring roll around so that all you see is the top, left and right corner. It should look like a meat filled envelope with the top opened.
Take the left corner and pull to the right so that it lays on top of the meat part.
Take the right corner and pull it to the left so that it lays on top of the meat part.
Roll it into a log shape.
Now open back up the only corner visible, and about one inch downward take the back of your meat spoon and slide it against the roll so some of the remainder meat juice/moisture seals it up. Alternatively, you can use a beaten egg and brush to seal it up as well.
Wrap the bottom of the egg roll in parchment place in Tupperware container.
Turn into a Zen-focused, spring-roll-skin-picking, meat-rolling-machine-until it is all gone.
Currently I have two large Tupperware containers filled with frozen egg rolls. I'm not sure how long they keep. For the rest, you can fry them up. Here's the frying part!
Have that pan with the wire rack and aluminum foil ready? Good. Get your pan with the 2-inch thick depth and your cartons of frying oil. Get your tongs. Oh, you might want to put on an apron too at this point if you didn't tear it off after rolling all those darned things.
Heat your oven to 200 F too.
Turn on the heat in your pan to medium-high and add oil until it's about 1 and a 1/2 inches in depth.
Ideally you should wait until oil is 350 F(see Steamy Kitchen's post), or you can wait until oil begins to ripple and a flick of a few droplets of water causes it to sizzle and sputter.
Gently lower your egg rolls into the oil and make sure not to crowd the pan. They should start sizzling and crackling away. Set the timer for 2 minutes.
Flip and fry again for 2 minutes.
Flip again, and fry for 3-4 minutes.
Flip and fry again for 3-4 minutes.
Take one of the egg rolls out and let it dry on the wire rack for a few seconds. Take a knife and cut the egg roll in half. Look at the insides. Is it pink? No? Then they're done. This is how my mom checked to see if they were done and by golly that's how I do it too.
Take the remaining egg rolls out onto the rack. Place it into the oven to keep warm while you cook off the remainder.
Get some paper towels handy to absorb the grease. You can either just eat them as is or you can eat it how my mom likes to eat it (and me too).
Get some red leaf lettuce, chopped cucumber, cilantro and mint. Put it on your dinner plate. Put some fish sauce in a dipping bowl.
Cut up the egg rolls with a knife into one-inch pieces.
Tear some red leaf lettuce, place an egg roll piece into the red leaf. Then take some cucumber and herbs and roll it up into the leaf. Dip into fish sauce.
For the cooked egg rolls, you can store them in Tupperware in the fridge. To reheat, preheat your oven to 425 F. Microwave your egg rolls for two minutes. Then place them on a wire rack on a cookie sheet lined with foil and bake for 10-12 minutes a side.
I hope you guys try these egg rolls. They're pretty tasty. You can certainly halve the recipe if you don't want massively scaled egg rolls, but I can't vouch for the ratios. If you do half it, I'd err on the lower/smaller quantity of oyster sauce since over salting it would pretty much ruin the batch. You can always add more oyster sauce later.
These egg rolls were a part of my childhood and ( slightly begrudgingly) my adult life. While I do enjoy them after I make them, these are a big factory labor of love. There is nothing more gratifying though when I hear the crunch of the skins as I bite into one, surrounded by mounds of lettuce and herb and the tang of fish sauce as it hits my tongue.
