You would not believe how easy it is to make your own tasty eggrolls (egg rolls?) at home!
All you need is 4 or 5 ingredients and to get over your fear of frying things!
Eggrolls at their most basic are a wrapper and a stuffing. For vegetarian eggrolls you can use cabbage, carrot and onion (along with whatever else you have on hand–bean sprouts are a classic). Want the meat eaters version? Just add cooked meat of your choice–ground beef, minced chicken, small shrimp.
Shred, chop or mince it all up (I didn’t feel like using my box grater or digging out the food processor so I just made carrot ribbons with my vegetable peeler). You want the pieces small enough so that you can easily bite through the eggroll without long strings of stuffing hanging out.
This is the point where you add your seasonings. I did a simple salt, pepper and garlic powder mix tossed on the vegetables and mixed well. I find that White Pepper gives the eggrolls that unidentifiable “Asian” taste. If you really want to be fancy you could drizzle a little bit of toasted sesame oil on there, but you want this filling to be VERY DRY or else it can make your eggroll wrappers all soggy.
To roll the wrappers, start out by placing your wrapper in front of you like a diamond.
1. Place your filling in the center of the wrapper. You probably need less than you think–about 1/4 cup or less. There should be “free” wrapper all the way around.
2. Fold up the bottom point snugly around the filling.
3. Fold in both side points.
4. Roll the filling and wrapper up. When you have just a small triangle left (which is really just after a single roll) take a bit of water with your finger or a pastry brush and moisten the triangle. Then finish rolling it. The water will help the wrapper seal onto itself. At this point you can cover well and refrigerate your egg rolls if you need to.
Now it’s time to fry them!
I recently found my FryDaddy 
If you were going to fry them in a regular pot/pan then I’d give myself a couple inches of oil (and plenty of extra space above that in the pot) and use a thermometer to make sure that my oil was about 375 before I started frying.
Let them drain briefly on a rack and then enjoy with some soy sauce. Yum!
Ingredients
- 1 pkg Eggroll Wrappers
- 1/2 head Chinese Cabbage
- 2 Carrots
- 4 Green Onions (or 1 small regular onion)
- Salt, White Pepper (or regular) and other spices
- Oil for Frying (not Olive Oil-smoke point it too low)
Instructions
- -Chop or shred cabbage, carrots, and onions. Mix in spices to taste.
- -Place a scant 1/4 cup of filling on each egg roll wrapper and wrap, sealing the final point with a bit of water.
- -Fry egg rolls in small batches at 375 degrees.
- -Drain briefly and serve warm
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I always make meaty egg rolls, and I saute the mix, which is usually chicken, cabbage, carrots and corn or mushrooms in a butter/teriyaki [i adore that this word is not in the online autocorrect] sauce blend until the chicken is completely dead and slightly browned and then let it cool slightly before filling my wrappers, which I over-stuff with almost 1/3 cup of filler before rolling tightly, egg-washing the seams and deep frying until a rich brown color. My Filling is never dry, but any means, and I use a metal table spoon to fill my wrappers. We don’t make these often, but when we do, we go all out and make sticky white rice as well!
I had a friend who made these. She pan-fried them instead of deep-fat-frying them. And she got very creative with fillings. She made pizza eggrolls that had mozzarella cheese in them, and she made dessert egg rolls with an apple pie filling.
Those sound amazing! Buddy was just saying that he had “pizza” eggrolls with Yankee Bill last time I was out of town. . . it sounds like you could just wrap a cheese stick half in the egg roll wrapper and give spaghetti sauce for dipping. . .