The Secret to Wrapping Spring Rolls

I love spring rolls.  Fried are nice, but I really prefer the fresh rolls, with the pink shrimp showing through the almost transparent roll skin... Ummm!

But I live 20 miles from the nearest oriental restaurant.  So when I found spring roll skins at an oriental grocery, the solution was obvious - make my own! 

Which turned out to be harder than it looks. 

Spring roll skins, also called rice paper, are made of a mixture of rice flour, water, and salt.  Dried, they are sold in cellophane packages, and look like they'll last a century or so.  They are flat and brittle, and have to be dampened before use. 

Every oriental cookbook and online recipe guide I found advised laying the roll skin on a towel and dampening, so I tried that. 

Here's what they don't tell you.  In its dampened state, a spring roll skin is almost supernaturally adhesive!  Follow the cookbook directions - just try it!  Pick up the dampened skin from the towel and move it to your rolling surface.  You'll probably find that one part of the skin is going to attach itself to another part.  If you're VERY careful, you might detach it without tearing.  But you could also wind up with a wadded up mess. 

Now try it my way.

After much trial and error, I devised a technique that works well for me - see what you think.  You'll need a cookie sheet, paper towels, and a spray mister filled with water.

Take the cookie sheet and place a paper towel on it.  Mist the paper towel so that it's wet all over.  Take a spring roll skin and put it on top of the paper towel.  Mist the skin, again, wet all over.  Put another paper towel on top of the spring roll skin and pat down.  Add another spring roll skin on top, and mist.  Paper towel and pat, spring roll skin and mist, until you have as many spring roll skins as you plan to use.  Add a towel to the top and mist it.

Your skin stack should stay usable for twenty or thirty minutes while you're prepping ingredients and rolling - it might last longer, but I've never tried. 

Now gather your ingredients and your skin stack by your rolling surface.  A china plate works well. 

Peel the top paper towel from the stack - the spring roll skin should be attached to the underside.  Hold the paper towel by two corners and move it to your rolling surface and place it flat, skin down, paper up.  Only now do you peel off the paper towel!  Do this carefully, making sure that the paper is entirely detaching from the skin. 

If the paper towel is sticking and seems about to tear, lightly mist, not where the towel and skin are joined, but on the outside of the towel.  That should loosen it.  If you miscalculate and a bit of paper towel gets stuck to the spring roll skin, a light application of mist should allow you to roll up the paper and remove it. 

And voila!  You have a spring roll skin flat on your rolling surface and ready to fill.

What to fill it with?  Oh, what do you like?  Crunchy semi-steamed vegetables, rice noodles, bits of chicken, fish or pork.  And my favorite - shrimp.  One qualifier is that you don't want anything that's too moist, or it will weaken the skin and your spring roll will fall apart.  (This is also why you want to use dipping sauce rather than putting the sauce on the inside.)  Drain your ingredients thoroughly and pat dry.

Place your filling in a row down the center of the skin.  Leave room at the ends, at least 1 1/2 inches, so you can tuck.  When you have your filling in place, bring up the short ends and fold them over the ends of the filling row, and press down either side of the filling - this is where the adhesive qualities of rice paper become a good thing.  Now you can pull up one side of the roll and fold it over the filling longways.  Pull up the other side, and roll, tightening and neatening your roll. 

And there you have it!   Well, you can deep fry now if you insist.  Or you can just sit down with your spring rolls and your favorite dipping sauce and dig in.  Hoison sauce, Chinese mustard, duck sauce, spicy peanut sauce. 

Heck, make enough and just call it dinner.


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copyright 2005 by Joyce Harmon

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