Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Vietnamese egg rolls (baked)

You can definitely fry these too, but I opted to bake them because they still taste yummy baked and the taste sacrifice is worth the health benefit to me.

Serve it with lettuce and dipping sauce.

Filling:
(these are just estimates of what I used since I tend not to measure things, so you might want to cook up a small bit of the meat before rolling the egg rolls to check the flavor)



- 1 package of ground pork (20 oz) (turkey, chicken, shrimp, etc or combos of different meats will work too)

- 2 carrots (shredded)
- 1 onion diced
- 1 packet of mung bean thread noodles (soaked in water until softened, then chopped into pieces no longer than 1.5" - I used my food processor for this) *
- 3 cloves of garlic minced
- 2 green onions (optional)
- 1/2 cup of wood ear mushrooms or shitake mushrooms diced (optional)
- 2 Tbsp of fish sauce (if you don't have this, add a bit of salt or more soy)
- 1 Tbsp of soy sauce
- 2 tsp of sugar
- 1 Tbsp of sesame oil (optional)
- 2 Tbsp of oyster sauce (if you don't have this, add a bit of salt of more soy)

Mix all the ingredients together in a large bowl. I recommend cooking up a bit of it to check for seasoning purposes before continuing.

* In case you aren't familiar with Mung Bean Thread Noodles (aka glass noodles or vermicelli) they usually come in bags with 4 small packets inside. Be sure not to get it confused with rice vermicelli or any of the other similar noodles. It should say Bean Thread somewhere on the packaging.


Wrapper & Dipping Sauce:
From the store -


Directions:
- Keep the wrappers covered with a damp paper towel to keep them from drying out while you're wrapping the rest of the egg rolls
- Place the filling across the bottom of a wrapper and shape it like a log
- Fold in the edges and roll it up like a burrito
- Place on an oiled cookie sheet or silpat or parchment paper seam side down. If you have trouble keeping it rolled up, you can brush the inside edge with an egg wash to "glue" it.**
- Brush each egg roll with a bit of oil to help with crisping and browning in the oven**
- Place it in a 400 degree oven for ~15-20 mins, or until crispy (it probably won't brown much)**
** Instead of brushing with oil and baking, you can deep fry them instead.

3 comments:

Jaime said...

those look great. i would have never thought to bake them though! great idea :)

SteamyKitchen said...

never tried baking the rolls - were they crispy?

Anonymous said...

Yes, they were crispy. Not as crispy as if they would've been if I had fried them, but crispy enough. Just make sure you brush some oil on them to help it crisp up.