Feeling nostalgic
Everyone probably has some comfort food from their childhood that will remind them of good times. Spring rolls are one of these things on my list. Close to our home, there was a shopping mall, where a Vietnamese couple have been selling Vietnamese spring rolls for as long as I can remember. Whenever I entered the shopping mall, I smelled the spring rolls being prepared and whenever I had some change in my pocket, I'd buy one (or two). They were a relatively cheap snack to eat as they only cost a buck each and were filled with vegetables. Where I was a difficult veggie eater as a child, I never ever complained about the spring rolls filling. I could barely find any meat in them, but I remember how I loved the crunchy outside when they came out of the fryer. Just amazing!
When we went to get takeaway from a Chinese restaurant
Which tastes super different than the Chinese food we can order here, we always ordered the big spring rolls together with some other food. I usually had enough eating a spring roll, and was easy to please. They taste quite different from the Vietnamese smaller variant, but also good! I haven't found any of them since I left some years ago, and felt nostalgic when I was prepping a veggie meal last week with beansprouts. I decided this week I was going to try to get my little girl as enthusiastic about spring rolls as my mother got me when I was a child. This girl here is still a difficult eater and it can be such a challenge most days to even get her to taste something, no matter how appealing I make it for her. Today it's going to be spring roll day and I hope she will enjoy some of it.
So many options for the filling
I have made the smaller spring rolls last year and they were a success regarding the taste. The only thing that wasn't, was the fact that the beansprouts sometimes went through the spring roll dough. I never realized I should have just used two of them on top of each other. I will do so now anyway. I figured that a bigger-sized spring roll is a better option when using beansprouts. I think they are an absolute must in spring rolls.
There are many different recipes to be found online to make spring rolls at home, I decided to not follow any of them directly and try to create my own recipe in the way that we both love them, as well as the little who I want to teach that these can be so delicious even with vegetables in them.
The ingredients
As mentioned, you can be as creative with the filling as you like and I'm only going to mention the ingredients I've used for the filling. Feel free to add spices (as I will be careful with those because of my mission lol) and leave stuff out/replace ingredients with something else. Today's spring roll will have:
- 2 big Chicken thighs
- 1/2 Leek
- 1 small onion
- 1 big carrot
- 500 grams of beansprouts
- garlic to your liking
- Salt & pepper
- Soy sauce
- phyllo dough
The process
First, boil the chicken thighs in water, I used a pressure cooker so it was only about 15 minutes of boiling time. Meanwhile, start cutting the vegetables (leek, onion, and carrot) into fine pieces as you prefer them in your filling. I used a grater for the carrot myself. I also made sure the beansprouts were nearby (so I won't forget to add them haha) and had the garlic ready.
Once the chicken is done, cut it into small parts. Now you can fruit the onions in a bit of butter and then add the chicken thighs as well. Next, I added the leek.
Time to add the beansprouts to the mix and with that, I started adding soy sauce as well. Last, add the carrot and mix thoroughly until done.
Folding the spring rolls
TIP:
I would advise you to buy the real dough meant for spring rolls, which you can find in Asian stores usually. The phyllo dough I used was a disaster, not firm enough compared to the original spring roll dough I had before. I had to wrap two around the filling, and often still had a torn spring roll. I threw away quite a few phyllo dough parts. On top of that, these weren't square so not easy to fold.
Of course, in the end, it will work out and be eatable, but it just doesn't look too pretty. Here's how I managed to fold them:
Looks aren't that great, thankfully, you won't notice that once prepared.
Now comes the important part, which I didn't know (or did before). Please take note:
When I was almost ready to fry them, I read that they should be frozen before doing so. There went my plan of having spring rolls for dinner.
Spring rolls frozen.
Puff pastry spring rolls for dinner
As the original spring rolls I made weren't gonna be ready for dinner, I changed the original plan and gave the spring rolls another twist. I had some normal puff pastry left in the fridge and I filled them up with the remaining filling before baking them in the oven at 200 degrees for about 15 minutes. That was probably the best idea of the day:
So these spring roll ideas have totally different bites and it's honestly very personal what you prefer. I can imagine that some people prefer one dough over the other. For the filling, it all worked out fine, noting that the puff pastry version had a nice crunchy bite (which I expected to have with the other ones).