I wanted to make really good Chinese Egg Rolls so I went searching for great recipes. Well, that was pretty easy, thanks to the creators of The Woks Of Life© web site. As usual I've made some changes to the recipe as found ... to make them exactly the way I want them to be. Yummy! They are superb!
Ingredients: (makes 30 egg rolls)
30 egg roll wrappers
10 cups of cabbage, shredded, packed
2 cups of carrot (shredded, packed)
2 cups of celery (finely chopped)
4 scallions (cut into 1/4" long pieces, green and white parts)
3 large cloves of garlic, minced
1 tablespoon of sea salt
2 teaspoons of sugar
2 tablespoons of toasted sesame oil
2 tablespoons of peanut oil (plus a quart or so more for frying)
1/4 teaspoon of five spice powder
1/4 teaspoon of white pepper
3 cups of Chinese BBQ pork (shredded or ground)
2 cups of shelled, cooked shrimp (chopped into 1/4" long pieces or ground)
1 egg (beaten)
12 ounces of Duck Sauce in a small bowl
2 tablespoons of hot Chinese mustard in a small dish
Directions:
Bring a one gallon pot of water to a boil. Mix the cabbage, carrots, and celery into the boiling water, return to a boil, and parboil for about 4 minutes. Then transfer the vegetables to a colander and rinse them with cold water while mixing them, then allow the mixture to drain for five minutes.
Thoroughly squeeze out all of the excess water from the vegetables (you can squeeze handfuls by tightly closing your fist, or, you can put the vegetable pieces on a clean kitchen towel, wrap it and then squeeze out the water). This is a very important step because if the filling is too wet, you will have a wet filling and soggy egg rolls later.
Once squeezed dry, transfer the vegetables to a large mixing bowl. Add the garlic, scallions, salt, sugar, sesame oil, 2 tablespoons of peanut oil, five spice powder, white pepper, BBQ pork, and cooked shrimp. Toss everything together. The filling is now ready to be wrapped.
To wrap the egg rolls, take a bit more than 1/3 of a cup of filling and place it on the wrapper about 2 to 3 inches in from a wrap corner. The wrapping method is similar to that of a burrito (look at the picture). Just brush on a thin layer of beaten egg around the perimeter to make sure it stays sealed after it is rolled. Line the egg rolls up on a sheet of parchment paper, and continue assembling egg rolls until you use all of the filling.
If you want to fry only some of what you have made then you need to freeze the rest. Storing freshly made eggrolls without freezing them allows interior moisture to accumulate on the dough bottom inside the eggroll and make it wet and unstable. Avoid that. Put a sheet of parchment paper on an 11 x 17 inch baking sheet. Place the eggrolls on the baking sheet not touching each other. Freeze the eggrolls for four or more hours. Remove the baking sheet and the frozen eggrolls from the freezer. Package the frozen eggrolls in a plastic bag or bags and put them back into the freezer until you want to use them. Alternatively, vacuum seal the frozen eggrolls two to a small bag and return them to the freezer.
Now we continue the recipe to fry the freshly made eggrolls you want to eat right away.
In a two quart pot, heat the peanut/canola oil to 325°F. You only need about a quart of oil - just enough to submerge a few egg rolls during frying. You might instead use a large, deep skillet and two quarts of oil and fry the eggrolls six to eight at a time, which is more convenient.
Carefully place three egg rolls into the oil, and fry them for about 5 minutes until golden brown. Keep them moving slowly in the oil and turn them over often to make sure they fry evenly. They are done frying when they start to hiss and pop with steam coming from the heated vegetables inside escaping into the hot oil.
Use tongs to remove the fried egg rolls from the hot oil and stand them up almost vertically against the inside side of a cast iron skillet or a large shallow bowl with the bottom end of the egg rolls on a paper towel to soak away excess oil.
Repeat the frying operation for the remaining egg rolls, three at a time.
Cool the egg rolls slightly and serve them, along with a generous bowl of Duck Sauce and a small dish of hot Chinese mustard on the side.
Freeze leftovers in freezer bags and reheat them later in the oven at 350°F, until they are crispy. I like to vacuum seal the frozen leftovers and then keep them in the deep freeze until I want to reheat them. That method avoids freezer burn.
Enjoy!