Crispy Vietnamese Spring Rolls

Cooking adventure number #3 – Crispy Vietnamese Spring Rolls

For my third main ingredient my sister selected ‘chicken’. I researched and selected three recipes including chicken bites, chicken and vegetable risotto and Vietnamese spring rolls. All recipes look delicious and all the recipes seemed easy to make however, I chose Vietnamese spring rolls because this recipe is a part of my culture and one of my favourite dishes. I decided to not use the website’s version of spring rolls and use my mum’s she has cooked spring rolls for parties, dinners and for a treat and I know they are magnificent so I want to know how to cook like my mum. The ingredients for the ‘crispy spring rolls’ are:

Spring roll pastry

Carrots

Egg Whites

Potatoes

Bean Vermicelli

Onion

Salt

Pepper

Sugar

Chicken Mince

Home – made chicken mince

Before I started preparing of the ingredients, I decided to make my own chicken mince. Why when I buy it ready made from the butchers? From the butchers, it’s hard to know which part of the chicken was used to make the chicken mince and also how much fat has been added to the chicken mince. By making my own chicken mince, I knew exactly which part of the chicken I was using and how much fat was added. The answer – zero fat! 

I decided to use chicken drumsticks with skin-off. I used this part this part as the drumstick is generally tastier as it is not the leanest part of the chicken and retains flavours really well. If you wanted a healthier option, it is best to use chicken breast because it is low in fat and it’s very lean. 

I had to remove the skin and also de-bone the chicken drumsticks. These are the skinless chicken drumsticks which were peeled. It looks like chicken breast but there’s a bone at the end of each chicken. 

This is me deboning the chicken drumsticks. Before I started separating the meat and the bone, I removed the veins and arteries from the chicken because they make me sick when I cut them open. Since my cousin wasn’t here yet, my sister took the photo which still looked good but not like some photos from my first two cooking adventure.

These are the chicken meat ready for the last step in making chicken mince; mincing.

These are the bones from the chicken drumsticks. Instead of throwing them in the bin, I decided to keep these so my mum can make a soup stock with the bones. The veins/arteries & skin were thrown out.

This is my sister mincing the chicken meat. My sister and I decided to use the food processor rather than the meat mincer because we didn’t know how to use it and it’s a long process of setting the machine up and cleaning it when use finish using it. I was too nervous of using the food processor so my sister took over my position and I was the video recording person.  My sister had to ‘process’ the chicken three times to make sure every piece was minced to the right consistence. This is the video of how the chicken was minced or ‘processed’ for the very first time.

After 45 mins of making our own chicken mince, it actually looked better than the butchers’ chicken mince although it wasn’t actually minced in the mincer. There were some veins left in the chicken but luckily, it didn’t burst open and I removed it from the mince. Buying the ready-made mince was $7 at the butcher and buying 1kg of drumsticks was $5 so we saved $2. Although it was a bit more effort than I expected, I was really pleased that we made our own chicken mince.

Once we finished making the mince, my cousin came home from work and started taking brilliant photos like this one of me putting in onion into the mince. The onion had to be finely diced and then all the juices of the onion ringed out. This is so the spring rolls didn’t end up soggy once they have been fried. The aroma of onion and mince was amazing!!!

Once I mixed the onion into the mince, I put in salt, sugar, pepper, carrot, potatoes and bean vermicelli into the mince. The carrot took forever to prepare for the mince, first I had to peel the skin of 4 carrots, then grating them which made my arm hurt and then ‘wringing’ the grated carrot so the water can drip out of the carrots. My sister noticed that the ingredients weren’t ‘blending’ into the mince so she told to use my hands more to mix the mince and ingredients. Although it’s messy I think the best way of mixing these ingredients is to use your hands rather than a wooden spoon.

After a few minutes of mixing the mince, the filling of the spring rolls was done; it was nice and even, no lumps and it was just what I imagined it to be like.

Making the spring rolls had to have mum’s technique of using triangles and squares: triangles are the filling’s pastry and the squares are the second layer of filling pastry. The triangle and squares each needed to have ten sheets (the packet had thirty sheets) and folded into its shape.

Once the pastries have been folded, it was then cut and peeled. It was a long process but once I stopped looking at my watch, time flew by and I finished really quickly.

When I was younger, seeing my mum make spring rolls look easy and I didn’t understand why she would always tired when all she would do is put the filling on the triangle, roll it, put in on the square then roll it and just before she finished rolling, she would put egg whites on the end and it would stick. Now, looks can be deceiving; depending how much filling was important; too much and it will not roll probably and too little and it will look like you just rolled pastry. My first attempt had too much filling and exploded (I couldn’t wrap the spring roll neatly) but I should learnt to use only ¾ of a teaspoon. Placing the filling roll onto the square was easy but the way I rolled made my mum very agitated. She said to stop ¼ of the way, fold the right side then left and roll it. It was difficult but I learnt a lot of things for that process and I was tired after making the rolls. I then used the egg white to seal the spring roll.

The springs rolls being stacked the way my mum like it. My cousin’s photography skills really showed in this photo. My cousin’s sister, mum and I made 100 springs rolls altogether. If we don’t use the spring rolls, mum puts them into sandwich bags and freezes them for the next time we eat spring rolls.

Next step was to fry the spring roll. The spring rolls are best to be fried in vegetable or canola oil. My mum told me that olive oil is too fragrant to fry spring rolls.

My dad taught me a trick in testing if the oil was hot enough for the spring rolls . This trick was taught from a local fish and chip shop where the owner used a small amount of rice noodles and dropped it in the oil. If the rice noodle cooked and rose to the top quickly, the oil is hot and ready to go. I like using large pieces of noodle because the shapes the noodles create are so interesting. The taste of fried noodles is plain but it looks like rice crackers. The video shows the progress in testing the oil.

These are the very first batch of spring rolls that are about to be fried in the hot oil. Once the spring rolls were in the fryer, oil started to splatter on the stove, on the floor and on my arm. It burned for a few seconds.

The smell of oil and spring roll being fried was going around the kitchen at the time when this photo was taken. My mum taught me a technique in frying the best spring rolls. Her method of explaining was difficult so I’ve put in a simpler way:

Step 1: When the spring rolls are placed in the fryer, put heat to high.

Step 2: When the ends of the spring rolls turn golden brown, put heat to medium.

Step 3: When the spring rolls are between light yellow to golden brown, take all springs rolls out (remember, the spring rolls are still cooking because of the oil still soaked in)

This was the very first one I took out of the deep fryer and it looked amazing!!! My cousin’s photography made the photo look like a professional. I used the chopstick method which took longer to take out each spring roll which meant the spring rolls were turning browner by the minute until my mum gave me a strainer which grabbed every single spring roll out of the deep fryer in one shot.

To plate up, I washed some fresh iceberg lettuce and Vietnamese mint, which is how they serve spring rolls at Vietnamese restaurants. It took around 15 minutes to plate up with the sweet chilli sauce. Traditionally, spring rolls is served with dipping fish sauce however we had none left at home and used  sweet chilli sauce as a replacement. Overall it was a delicious dish; the aim was to make my mum satisfied with the spring rolls. The ones she ate were a little bit overcooked because of the chopstick method but she liked it. I learnt a lot of techniques in making spring rolls so I’ll use those skills my mum taught me when I make more spring rolls for parties or for dinner with my mum. I can’t wait for the next recipe because this is going to be FUN!!!

This recipe was taken from my mum’s knowledge

Q: If you had chicken as your main ingredient, what would you make?

Answer this question in the comments section.