Like their thicker skinned cousin the egg roll, spring rolls are a popular staple at Chinese-American restaurants. As a kid, I never much cared for either variety because there was often more wrapper than filling and what meager filling they held tasted more like tired fryer oil than anything else.
All that changed while I was living in San Jose, when one of my roommates brought home a bag of King egg rolls. Their crisp oversized rolls are literally bursting with meaty filling and they border on addictive as it's next to impossible to stop at one (or even two or three)
Like many dishes of Chinese origin, spring rolls tell an interesting story of migration and adaptation because they can be found on just about every continent with variations in filling, wrapper and sauce. In the US, spring rolls are usually filled with cabbage, carrots, glass noodles, and pork, and wrapped in either a thin crisp wrapper (spring roll) or a thicker crunchy wrapper (egg roll). While they're adequately seasoned and can be eaten as-is, spring rolls are commonly dipped in a bright red sweet and sour sauce in the US.
For me, the perfect spring roll has a thin, crispy shell holding a trove of textures and flavors, which is why I tend to use the thinner wrappers and stuff them until they're nearly bursting at the seams. Today I filled my rolls with pork, onions, carrot, celery, shiitake mushrooms, napa cabbage, and glass noodes, but I also like adding water chestnuts, bamboo and wood ear for texture. For those of you that don't eat pork, ground chicken or crumbled firm tofu make fine substitutes.
The spring roll also has a Japanese cousin, Harumaki. The differences are subtle, but distinctive. You could always make both and have a taste test, but the real winner will be the person who gets to do the tasting.
📖 Recipe
Units
Ingredients
For filling
- 1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
- 2 teaspoons fresh ginger (minced)
- 170 grams ground pork (ground chicken or turkey is fine)
- 1 small onion (shredded)
- 125 grams carrot (~1 large carrot shredded)
- 70 grams celery (~1 rib shredded)
- 70 grams fresh shiitake mushrooms (2-3 large ones)
- 280 grams napa cabbage (shredded)
- 70 grams glass noodles (rehydrated and chopped)
- 2 tablespoons oyster sauce
- 2 tablespoons Shaoxing wine (or dry sherry)
- 2 teaspoons potato starch (halve if using cornstarch)
- 2 teaspoons soy sauce
- ½ teaspoon ground white pepper
- ¼ teaspoon salt
For spring rolls
- 15 sheets spring roll wrappers
- 3 tablespoons water
- 3 tablespoons flour
- vegetable oil (for deep-frying)
For sauce
- 6 tablespoons water
- ¼ cup rice vinegar
- 3 tablespoons granulated sugar
- 2 tablespoons ketchup
- 2 teaspoons potato starch (halve if using cornstarch)
- ¼ teaspoon salt
Instructions
- Combine the oyster sauce, Shaoxing, potato starch, soy sauce, white pepper and salt in a small bowl and whisk together.
- Heat a large frying pan over medium high heat. Add the sesame oil and ginger and fry until fragrant. Add the ground pork and stir-fry, using the edge of a spatula to break up the meat into little crumbs.
- When the meat is cooked, add the onion, carrot, celery, and shiitake mushrooms and continue stir-frying until the carrots are mostly cooked. Add the napa cabbage and glass noodles and continue stir-frying until the cabbage is mostly cooked. Add the sauce and stir-fry until there is no liquid left. Let this mixture cool.
- Make some glue by combing 3 tablespoons flour with 3 tablespoons water.
- Peel the wrappers and spread them out as pictured with about ½" of the wrapper below showing. This makes it easy to paint glue on several wrappers at once. Spread the glue with a pastry bush along the top edges of the wrapper.
- Place about â…“ cup of the room temperature filling about 2 inches above the bottom corner of the wrapper.
- Tightly roll the wrapper and filling half-way.
- Fold the left edge over right up against the edge of the filling, then fold the right edge over. The trick here is to taper your fold slightly so that the open flap is a little narrower than the bottom of the roll as this will create a good seal and prevent flaps of dough that will invite oil into your roll. It should look a bit like an open envelope at this point.
- Finish by continuing to roll until the flap seals itself against the roll.
- To make the sweet and sour sauce, whisk together the water, vinegar, sugar, ketchup, potato starch and salt in a small saucepan until there are no lumps. Bring the mixture to a boil stirring constantly until your sauce has thickened.
- Prepare a paper towel lined rack. Pour about 2" of vegetable oil into a heavy bottomed pot and heat to 320 degrees F.
- Fry the springrolls a few at a time, being careful not to overcrowd the pot. Turn them over frequently so that they brown evenly. When they reach an even tan color, transfer the spring rolls to your rack and allow them to drain. Repeat with the rest of the spring rolls.
Marilia says
what is a caterpillar roll does it actually taste like a caterpillar
Marc Matsumoto says
It's a sushi roll made with unagi, cucumber and with avocado on the outside. It gets its name because it looks like a caterpillar https://norecipes.com/blog/caterpillar-roll-recipe/
kellyanne says
srap neto promise
kathleenditommaso says
I absolutely appreciate the way you "teach" a recipe. Your explanation & photos on rolling spring rolls is a prime example: the tip on the folding angle to create a good seal is an "aha!" moment for me. What do you do w/the left over oil? Reuse it or toss it?
kathleenditommaso says
I absolutely appreciate the way you "teach" a recipe. Your explanation & photos on rolling spring rolls is a prime example: the tip on the folding angle to create a good seal is an "aha!" moment for me. What do you do w/the left over oil? Reuse it or toss it?
Marc Matsumoto says
Thanks for your nice note! Regarding used oil, I'm not a big fan of filtering and reusing, so I usually try to minimize the amount I use by frying in a pot with a narrow diameter. The only drawback is that a narrower pot not only holds less oil, it also holds less food, so you'll have to do the frying in several batches.
Gill says
Thanks for sharing all these awesome recipes.
Tried cooking this recipe, you mentioned to stir fry till there is no liquid left. Mine mixture has no liquid at all and after adding the sauce , the mixture became very lumpy. Can you please tell me what I did wrong?
Thank you
Marc Matsumoto says
Hi Gill, there are a couple of possibilities. The first, did you use potato starch or another starch like cornstarch? Other starches have different thickening properties and so amounts would need to be adjusted. The other possibility is that the starch in the sauce settled and the resulting clumps made the lumps. If this was the case, you need to give the sauce a stir so the starch is evenly distributed before you add it to the pan. I hope this helps.
Deelilah Maye says
I made spring rolls recently and had trouble browning them no matter how long I cooked them. I heated the oil very hot then and they got slightly more brown but kinda burnt looking and certainly not the even tan color I've seen on every online recipe. I even looked up that specific problem and found nothing. Not sure if you'll even respond but any idea why that might be? Thanks 🙂
Marc Matsumoto says
Hi Deelilah, did you use this recipe or something else? If you used this one, did you measure the temperature of the oil? A temperature of 320 F (which isn't super hot) should be sufficient to crisp the spring rolls. If they don't crisp, and your oil is the right temperature there are two possibilities. The first is that your filling was too wet, as described in step 3, you need to cook the filling until all the liquid is gone, otherwise the liquid coming from the filling will make the wrapper soggy and it won't crisp. The second possibility is there wrappers you're using may be too wet. They should be fairly dry paper-like translucent sheets as shown in the photos above.
Deelilah Maye says
Hmm. First thank you very, very much for your response and suggestions! I've actually just gotten to the point where I can make egg rolls without a recipe but the store only had the spring roll wrappers so I (stupidly) thought how different can it be? I believe my wrappers were like yours, but I'm not sure, mine were almost plastic like and I dipped them in warm water prior to rolling after reading people suggesting that online. After reading your comment I realize that this and the filling being too wet were both probably the problem, when I buy the ingredients again I will follow this recipe to the t. Thanks again, I really appreciate it.
Marc Matsumoto says
Hi Deelilah, so your mistake is totally understandable. There's a lot of confusion between spring rolls and egg rolls, and adding to the confusion is the fact that there's a difference between Chinese spring rolls and vietnamese spring roll wrappers. While the terms are often used interchangeably here's the definitions I go by:
Egg roll wrapper - A thick large square wrapper with a slight grey or yellow tint made of a dough. It's similar to the wrappers used for potstickers and wontons, only bigger. These will work, but will give you a roll that's more crunchy than crispy and the surface of the wrappers will bubble when fried.
Vietnamese spring roll wrapper - Round dried wrappers made of rice flour. They're sold dry and have a basket weave pattern on them and need to be dipped in water to rehydrate. They're almost totally transparent and look like sheets of thin plastic. These are used for Vietnamese spring/summer rolls and should not be fried.
Spring roll wrapper - A paper thin large square wrapper that's translucent and creamy white in color. They're sold refrigerated or frozen. This is the type of wrapper you want for this recipe.
You probably want to buy your wrappers based off appearance rather than what the labels say as they don't all follow a common naming convention. I hope that helps!
mickie says
I looked over your site, and I couldn't find a recipe for the wrappers themselves, any chance you will add that? I would rather know how to make them than buy them. Healthier that way.
Marc Matsumoto says
Hi Mickie, spring roll wrappers are made with flour, water and salt. Just add enough water to make a thin crepe-like batter and then follow my instructions for making crepes: https://norecipes.com/5-tips-for-making-perfect-crepes-recipe-for-crepes-with-buttered-apples/ The only difference is that you don't want to let it brown. Flip it over as soon as the edges start to dry out. Unless you have a square pan, your wrappers will be round, so you'll need to adjust the rolling technique a bit (your rolls are going to be skinnier).
mickie says
Thank you so much!
Would I do the same for egg rolls or won tons?
Or do they have a different recipe?
Marc Matsumoto says
Hi Mickie, eggrolls and wontons use a different wrapper. The dough for egg rolls/wontons/potsticks is flour, salt and boiling water kneaded together (use a stand mixer to avoid burning your hands) until you have a firm dough. Then you just roll the dough through a pasta roller until it's the desired thickness (wontons wrappers should be quite thin, while egg roll and potsticker wrappers can be a little thicker)
Haneui Lee says
Hello, I made spring rolls and stored in the freezer. Do I need to thaw frozen spring rolls before I fry them? or I can just fry them from frozen. If these are frozen, how long do I need to cook for?