Spring Rolls with Peanut Dipping Sauce

AAHHHHHH. These are sooo good! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I am not someone who enjoys cooking, but when something is this easy, I am happy to be in the kitchen!

Ingredients:

Rice paper spring roll wrappers, available in specialty food stores or you can buy online here: 22 cm or 8 1/2 inches in diameter or 16 cm approximately 6″ in diameter
Fresh vegetables, prepared in sticks, such as
arugula (a few leaves)
red cabbage
carrots
celery
cucumber
radish
scallions
cilantro
lettuce
avocado
mango
tofu
chicken (little bigger than a 2″ stick)
shrimp (1/2 shrimp, cut vertically)
cellophane noodles
etc.

First, I made the peanut sauce because when the spring rolls are done, I don’t want to wait to eat them. The peanut sauce is the easiest part, just whisk all the ingredients together:
⅓ cup creamy peanut butter
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar or apple cider vinegar
2 tablespoons reduced-sodium tamari or soy sauce
2 tablespoons honey
2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil
½ lime or lemon, juiced
2 garlic cloves, pressed or minced

All it takes is a little prep work – slicing whatever veggies you want to include in your spring roll. I used red cabbage, arugula, avocado, cucumber and carrots. And the assembling of it, rolling the actual spring roll, is a little tricky. My first few times, I felt very awkward, but then as I realized I had to put less in the roll, it became much easier.

To Roll:
1.Clear an area for rolling the spring rolls such as a cutting board or a clean counter top. You will need a pie plate or any pyrex dish that is the right size to soften your spring roll wrappers. Fill the pie plate with warm water. Put a wrapper in the water, rub it a little bit with your hand, flip it and do the same to the other side. Just make sure the whole thing gets wet. It will still feel slightly firm when you take it out of the water, but it will continue to soften. If you leave it in the water too long, it will start sticking to itself and get too soft to work with.

2.Next, lay the rice paper wrapper out flat on your work surface and start placing your ingredients in the bottom third of the wrapper. Keep the ingredients in the shape you want the spring roll to be, if you are using the 22 cm size, you will place the ingredients in an approximately 5″ long small pile. Do not over stuff or you will not be able to roll the wrapper; leave enough room on all sides so you will be able to fold the sides in. Trial and error really helped me figure out how much of each ingredient to put into each spring roll. The rice paper wrapper takes a minute or so to soften up once you’ve taken it out of the water, so after you’ve placed all your ingredients, your wrapper should be malleable enough to roll up.

3.Lastly, begin to roll. Pull the bottom of the wrapper (the part closest to you, up and over the filling, tucking it under a bit to help the ingredients stay snugly in place. Then, pull the left side of the wrapper toward the middle, then the right, and then finish rolling it up.

I know you will love these, please be patient with yourself. At first, my fingers did not cooperate and then after 2 or 3 tries, I knew how to roll a spring roll! And, so will you! Let me know in the comments what you fill yours with and how they came out!

p.s. This article has pictures of the rolling process. I did not use the pictures, but it might help some people.