Looking for a healthy snack or just something to enjoy in life? Let’s make spring rolls that will fulfill one of those probably fine!

Healthy food can mean so many things nowadays. Those, who haven’t read science recent findings, are still on the bandwagon of fat being the source of all evil and they are able to go as far as having skimmed milk in their coffee with egg white omelet for breakfast.

Others, who are a bit more up to date on recent happenings in the metabolic science world, are on an all-in assault on various kinds of refined sugar and blame decades of obesity rate increase on it.

Given the amount of sugar consumed and put mindlessly into all sort of food that isn’t dessert but supposedly nourishing food, it’s not surprising that people put on weight.

Between the two, there are some others, whose popularity waned by the time like the couple of years ago popular paleo, the always recommended by doctors but no one cared about Mediterranean diet or the super weird sounding newish vegan diet.

Choosing one for ourselves or even worse, our children is an enormous responsibility we are left alone to deal with. It doesn’t help much that few of us is well versed in the intriguing ways of science and even worse picking up new habits once old theories are proved to be less accurate.

Unfortunately, science is as accurate the last available data it can work with. Beside, scientists have new data every day, they are always forced to work with incomplete information set so their results can be flawed.

All the same, as many of us trust our cars to mechanics and our surgeries to surgeons, listening to what experts have to say in any given area, yield much better outcomes for many of us than just creating our own path from limited set of experiences.

Given that, we have to possibility to rely on such knowledge, of course. There were times when people had to be jack of all trades to get by, and eat everything they could find, no matter if it was high in carbs, fat, or animal produce.

In fact, the more it contained from any of those, like egg rolls, is clearly the end result of such tendency, the better it was.

Many of us have already known egg rolls that has nothing to do with eggs but much to do with food being rolled in a not so thin but not excessively thick sheet of dough. The ingredients can vary but most of the time, we resolve to cabbage pork or chicken to be rolled up.

Spring rolls are similar sheets of dough in nature but since we have or more precisely Asians have spring rolls for centuries, their fillings and the sheet of dough used, can vary much more than our limited imagination of Asian inspired food.

Without spring rolls, we wouldn’t have egg rolls today and if we try spring rolls, we may rue the days, we spent eating those oversized monsters.

Spring rolls have more to do with spring than egg rolls with eggs. Spring rolls are called spring because traditionally they were eaten at springtime with seasonal vegetables. It was a cherished dish from an era without fridge and global food distribution system which meant people didn’t really have fresh fruit and vegetables until spring.

Maybe the reason, spring rolls haven’t been able to significantly spread over the walls of Chinese culture, hence allowing egg rolls some space, is because making spring roll wrappers is kind of a pain.

It’s not impossible to make, as people in one of the most populous country on Earth making it for a long, long time, but it’s certainly not something everyone wants to do at the end of a 16 hours working day or even after half of that.

Many of us even struggle to peel off the individual pieces from a stack of thawed spring roll wrappers, let alone making them from scratch.

Filling and frying them isn’t something anyone couldn’t do, so if we manage to find a pack of spring roll wrappers in our favorite Asian grocery store, we are good to make some tasty rolls.

Spring rolls are traditionally deep fried in oil, but we can bake them in the oven once sprayed, brushed, or dunk the rolls into a bit of oil.

Baking them without oil will produce subpar results, both in color and texture but it may clear some of the hurdles we come across when convincing our conscious about having such a dish in our healthy life.

Or we just close our eyes and enjoy the ride, after all there are vegetables inside.

Ingredients

(makes 20)

1 tablespoon / 15ml Sesame oil
4 tablespoons / 40g Green onion
6 cups / 400g Cabbage (shredded)
2 cups / 250g Carrots (shredded)
1 cup / 100g Mushroom (sliced)
1 teaspoon / 5g Salt
1 tablespoon / 15ml Soy sauce
1 piece / 10g Ginger (peeled, grated)
2½ cup / 150g Chicken, ground pork (thinly sliced or ground, optional)
20 Spring roll wrappers (50 sheets package, 7.5″ / 190mm x 190mm)

How to make Spring rolls

Spring rolls

Thaw the spring rolls then peel off a couple of sheets in advance. Spring roll sheets are stuck together snugly and it takes a bit of time and practice to separate them.

Filling

Beginner

Mix the ingredients. Yes, we can mix the raw meat in there as we’re going to fry the whole thing.

Advanced

In a skillet, heat oil to high. Add the green onion then sauté until glassy / translucent look, for about 3 – 5 minutes.
Add cabbage, carrots, mushroom, salt, soy sauce, ginger. Sauté until the cabbage reduced in size, for about 5 – 10 minutes.
Add optional meat. We can use raw or already prepared meat like rotisserie chicken or leftover meat.

Assembly

Place a sheet on the working surface with one of the corners facing in our direction. Depending on the size of spring roll sheet, we place filling on the bottom corner.
Roll up the bottom corner with the filling inside to the middle of the sheet.
Fold the right and left corners to the middle.
Roll the sheet up until the end.

Frying

Heat oil to medium-high and place the spring rolls in there.
Take them out when golden brown in about 10 – 15 minutes.

Baking

Brush the spring rolls with oil. It’s an important step, otherwise the rolls just dry out white and pale.
Place them in a preheated, 390°F / 200°C oven until golden brown, 30 – 40 minutes.