Vietnamese Summer Rolls
For any fan of Asian food, these are a treat and simple to make.
The Rice paper is made from just ground rice and water. The batter is poured onto a fine fabric stretched over a large pot of boiling water. It is tilted or scraped out to the right thinness if needed and left to cook quickly in the rising steam. It is then lifted from the fabric and left to dry on a woven bamboo mat. Viet World Kitchen has a better description and pictures of the process. One of Martin Yan's cooking episodes also shows the process.
There are different sizes but for this dish, the round ones about 8 inches across are the ones I prefer. When you're shopping for the papers, pick up some rice paper trays. These are round perforated plastic trays, about 9-10 inches across. These trays make softening the rice papers simple and also simplify rolling.
If you can't find the trays, you can soften the papers by hand and roll them on a dampened cloth towel.
I tend to make a meal of these and let everyone roll their own with what they want in them. The trays make this possible. Without the trays, I used to pre-roll all the goi cuon myself.
Many different fillings are possible. Generally you'll have a meat or seafood, some herbs, lettuce of some sort or another, rice noodles and a sauce. For this particular meal, I used some char siu I picked up at Costco. I usually keep a package of this in my freezer for quick meals like this. Some sliced cucumbers, rice noodles, a spring mix salad (Costco again) and some Basil and Cilantro. I usually have some Nuoc Cham on the table for people to season their rolls with. A peanut sauce is also commonly used, but my taste preference is the Nuoc Cham.
Prepare the Nuoc Cham (See next blog post) I prepare this first to give the garlic some time to infuse the sauce. I made a bowl you can see in the background of some other shots, but here's just a spoonfull I'll use for my servings.
Soak the rice noodles in hot water. When they're soft, drain away the hot water and coat them with a little toasted sesame oil so they don't stick together in one bunch. While they're soaking, you can do some of the other prep, but keep an eye on them so they don't get too soggy.
Slice the Char Siu and cucumbers.
Prepare the herbs, in this case some basil and cilantro. Mint, lemon balm, culantro, ra rahm, and many other herbs are good here too.
If you're using a whole leaf lettuce, this would be a good time prepare the lettuce. Here, I used a commercially available spring mix of lettuces. If you don't have trays for the rice paper, you might make a roll, then roll it again in a whole leaf of lettuce. This keeps the rice paper from sticking to other rolls on a plate or to the plate itself. They can be quite tenaciously sticky.
I had my daughter prepare the rice papers while I did some of the other prep. But with the trays it goes pretty fast. I prefer to lay a sheet on each of the trays I'll be using and stack them up. You'll see that I have two different sizes of papers as I was finishing off the tail ends of two different packs of rice sheets. The larger sheets just barely fit on the trays.
Then I take one extra tray that I use to encase each rice paper as I soak it in the hot water. Below, my daughter spins each cased rice paper through the hot water.
I reuse that extra tray for each sheet of rice paper. Then I stack each softened tray of rice paper for use during the meal.
We prepared 15 rice papers. In the course of the meal itself, you'd take a tray with a softened rice paper and lay it on your plate. Then you'd start to add the different ingredients. What ever you put on first will be the presentation surface so it's common to use a colorful ingredient first. Quite often, you'll see three shrimp laid out. Here I laid on some Char Siu strips.
Then cucumbers.
Basil and Cilantro
Rice noodles.
A stack of spring lettuce mix. I'll be squishing this down in as I roll it up so don't worry that it's overfilled.
Now roll it up burrito style. Fold the bottom up onto the lettuce and compress a bit as needed.
Fold in the right side, again compressing as needed.
Now the left side.
And roll it the rest of the way up. Notice the Char Siu is now on top and displays nicely through the rice paper.
Set the tray aside and you can now dip or drizzle on the Nuoc Cham and enjoy your goi cuon.
The Rice paper is made from just ground rice and water. The batter is poured onto a fine fabric stretched over a large pot of boiling water. It is tilted or scraped out to the right thinness if needed and left to cook quickly in the rising steam. It is then lifted from the fabric and left to dry on a woven bamboo mat. Viet World Kitchen has a better description and pictures of the process. One of Martin Yan's cooking episodes also shows the process.
There are different sizes but for this dish, the round ones about 8 inches across are the ones I prefer. When you're shopping for the papers, pick up some rice paper trays. These are round perforated plastic trays, about 9-10 inches across. These trays make softening the rice papers simple and also simplify rolling.
If you can't find the trays, you can soften the papers by hand and roll them on a dampened cloth towel.
I tend to make a meal of these and let everyone roll their own with what they want in them. The trays make this possible. Without the trays, I used to pre-roll all the goi cuon myself.
Many different fillings are possible. Generally you'll have a meat or seafood, some herbs, lettuce of some sort or another, rice noodles and a sauce. For this particular meal, I used some char siu I picked up at Costco. I usually keep a package of this in my freezer for quick meals like this. Some sliced cucumbers, rice noodles, a spring mix salad (Costco again) and some Basil and Cilantro. I usually have some Nuoc Cham on the table for people to season their rolls with. A peanut sauce is also commonly used, but my taste preference is the Nuoc Cham.
Prepare the Nuoc Cham (See next blog post) I prepare this first to give the garlic some time to infuse the sauce. I made a bowl you can see in the background of some other shots, but here's just a spoonfull I'll use for my servings.
Soak the rice noodles in hot water. When they're soft, drain away the hot water and coat them with a little toasted sesame oil so they don't stick together in one bunch. While they're soaking, you can do some of the other prep, but keep an eye on them so they don't get too soggy.
Slice the Char Siu and cucumbers.
Prepare the herbs, in this case some basil and cilantro. Mint, lemon balm, culantro, ra rahm, and many other herbs are good here too.
If you're using a whole leaf lettuce, this would be a good time prepare the lettuce. Here, I used a commercially available spring mix of lettuces. If you don't have trays for the rice paper, you might make a roll, then roll it again in a whole leaf of lettuce. This keeps the rice paper from sticking to other rolls on a plate or to the plate itself. They can be quite tenaciously sticky.
I had my daughter prepare the rice papers while I did some of the other prep. But with the trays it goes pretty fast. I prefer to lay a sheet on each of the trays I'll be using and stack them up. You'll see that I have two different sizes of papers as I was finishing off the tail ends of two different packs of rice sheets. The larger sheets just barely fit on the trays.
Then I take one extra tray that I use to encase each rice paper as I soak it in the hot water. Below, my daughter spins each cased rice paper through the hot water.
I reuse that extra tray for each sheet of rice paper. Then I stack each softened tray of rice paper for use during the meal.
We prepared 15 rice papers. In the course of the meal itself, you'd take a tray with a softened rice paper and lay it on your plate. Then you'd start to add the different ingredients. What ever you put on first will be the presentation surface so it's common to use a colorful ingredient first. Quite often, you'll see three shrimp laid out. Here I laid on some Char Siu strips.
Then cucumbers.
Basil and Cilantro
Rice noodles.
A stack of spring lettuce mix. I'll be squishing this down in as I roll it up so don't worry that it's overfilled.
Now roll it up burrito style. Fold the bottom up onto the lettuce and compress a bit as needed.
Fold in the right side, again compressing as needed.
Now the left side.
And roll it the rest of the way up. Notice the Char Siu is now on top and displays nicely through the rice paper.
Set the tray aside and you can now dip or drizzle on the Nuoc Cham and enjoy your goi cuon.
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