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Egg rolls are a popular dish in Asian cuisine, made with minced meat and vegetables wrapped in pastry and deep-fried. Cantonese cuisine has influenced Chinese food in America, where egg rolls are often served with dinner combos or as a lunch option. Recipes and techniques are widely available online for adventurous cooks.
Almost every national cuisine has some kind of wrap dish. The French have crepes, the Spanish have empanadas, Mexico has burritos, and China has egg rolls. In fact, egg rolls are seen in one form or another, in nearly every variety of Asian food.
Egg rolls are those savory wraps filled with minced meat and veggies, wrapped in a sheet of pastry, and deep-fried. The “egg” comes from the fact that the pastry sheet can be brushed with an egg wash first. Egg rolls are usually made with a wheat-based dough, while their cousin, spring rolls, are often made with a rice-flour dough.
Southern Chinese Cantonese cuisine has most influenced Chinese food in America and egg rolls are a good example of that. Cantonese food is most often fried, as are egg rolls. Egg rolls are often served with a dinner combo in Chinese restaurants, and the large ones make a good lunch, along with a bowl of soup.
Every Chinese restaurant has its own egg roll recipes. Some focus more on meat, others on vegetables. Some restaurants serve a spicy version. Recipes and techniques are widely available online for the adventurous cook.
A standard egg roll recipe calls for Napa cabbage, water chestnuts, onions, bean sprouts, and diced pork or small shrimp. The ingredients are first fried and toppings and sauce are added. The filling is then drained a little and left to cool.
The cook then puts in the egg rolls and fills them with the cooled ingredients. Egg rolls can be wrapped in a variety of ways, but the most common way is to place a large spoonful of filling on the short end of the wrap, then roll it up, tuck it in at the ends, and seal the seam with a “glue” made of corn starch and water. The buns are then fried.
While a bit labor intensive, many cooks say the egg rolls are worth the effort. Homemade types, they say, are far superior to restaurant ones, and certainly better than anything else.
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