Eat Collective: 360 Egg Rolls
“My mom makes Vietnamese egg rolls and she makes them in ridiculous amounts. She will take a large, family sized salad bowl and fill it with meat, and then she will take little wrappers and make as many as that bowl will hold. Then, we fry them up and we freeze them.”
“She’s been making them for decades. I remember eating those as a child and we used to have neighborhood BBQs all the time. She would always bring the egg rolls- that was her dish and everybody loved them. It was always the highlight of the BBQ. She just made them the other day. She made a batch of 360 of them and I took 103 of them home.”
What are they made of?
“The meat is usually pork and sometimes there are vermicelli noodles, carrots, sometimes mushrooms and.. what’s it called? Taro Root. It’s kind of like a potato. It gives it a starchy , potato-y flavor. All of that gets mushed up with salt and pepper and seasonings. That gets rolled up in a rice paper and deep fried. There’s traditional sauce made with fish sauce, lime, chills, sugar and a little vinegar that’s meant to go over the top. You get a bed of vermicelli noodles, lay the egg rolls on top and pour the sauce over it.”
Is this a secret family recipe?
“It’s not really a secret, everybody makes them but everyone makes them different. This is my mom’s rendition and they are fantastic. It’s hard to believe they are homemade!”