Vietnamese Crispy Spring Rolls (Chả gio)

I'm not sure about cho gio. But there are two main types of Vietnamese rolls. There are the rolls made with rice papers that typically have rice noodles, fresh vegetables, and some sort of meat. "Goi cuon" is the standard which is poached shrimp and pork. Prepared hoisin/peanut sauce is the most common dip though prepared fish sauce is also used. "Bi cuon" is another common one which uses garlic pork/pork skin and that is dipped in fish sauce. Vietnamese Grilled Meat (Thịt nướng) - See towards the bottom for rice paper wrapping Shredded Pork And Pork Skin In Roasted Rice Powder (Bì) - see second part for the garlic pork "bi"

See Cooking Vietnamese for the dipping sauces.

"Chả gio" is the second type of roll which is fried. Coincidentally I was going to make a post on making these. They are dipped in prepared fish sauce.

Ingredients

Ingredients to be soaked:

• 1-2 oz. dried cellophane noodles. These are thinner and clear when cooked, not like rice vermicelli. Also called bean thread noodles or glass noodles.
• 1 oz. dried wood ear or cloud ear fungus cut

Rest of filling ingredients:

• 1 lb. ground pork (you can also have some mixture of pork and ground shrimp)
• 1 onion, minced
• 1 carrot, peeled and grated
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 egg
• 1 taro root (one about the same size as the carrot), peeled and grated (optional but gives a great flavor)
• fish sauce and pepper to taste

Method

1. Soak the cellophane noodles and fungus for 20-30 minutes. Drain and chop finely. 2. Mix together with the rest of the ingredients. You'll have a lot of other filling in proportion to the pork, this creates a softer roll.

3. Make rolls with your filling using lumpia wrappers or other thin sort of wrappers. How many you can make depends on the size of your wrapper, they come in various sizes. Use an egg wash or just water with a bit of flour mixed in to help you seal them shut. The classic are these wrappers which are fairly thin:

The wrappers I picture come frozen. Let them thaw and then separate them so they are ready to use before filling because when your hands are sticky with filling it will be difficult to separate. Put them under a damp towel so they don't dry out.

These are pretty messily wrapped, it is better to tuck the ends so you don't have thin wrapper bits that will fry much more quickly than the rest.

4. Deep fry at 375 F, 5-7 minutes, for the ones I have pictured but it will depend on how big your rolls are.

How to eat:

• Just by themselves, dipped in prepared fish sauce
• Wrapped in lettuce with some herbs like mint or basil, dipped in fish sauce
• Chop up to top a rice noodle bowl or to add to a rice noodle bowl with other meats[[category:Pork]