Heather and Ken - Here is Your Mom's Egg Roll Recipe
Ingredients:
one package of 25 egg roll wraps
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Fillings
3 medium size of carrots (about 7" long, 1" diameter)
5 or 6 sticks of celery
3 or 4 cups of pork tenders or sirloin pork (small diced meat or ground meat)
if use chicken, use chicken breasts
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seasoning:
sea salt, peanut oil, 1 tablespoon of brown sugar, 5 tablespoons of white wine, light soy sauce (do not
use dark sauce, not good for taste), 3 tablespoon of oyster sauce (I can get one bottle for you if you want, only brand name is good).
3 or 4 eggs
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Before starting, leave the egg roll package of egg roll wraps in room temperature for about 2 hours, cover with a dry cloth on top, keep it from drying out in the air.
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Prepare to cook fillings
Veggie filling
1. Keep every ingredient in a separate bowl, do not mix them up now.
2. Peel out skin of carrots and tough edges of celery sticks.
3. Cut carrots and celery into small pieces like .20" thick by 1/4" long for each stick. If using a processor, can be shredded.
4. Cook carrots only in a pan, start a thin oil to heat up the bottom of the pan, put in carrots and cover up cold water, warm water, or hot water (any temp of water ok) at the beginning, barely above the carrots, of course, spread evenly, cover with a top over the pan, medium or med/low heat until it is tender and cooked thru (not overly cooked), maybe about 10 mins or so. When done, transfer it to a bowl.
5. Repeat the same step in 4 to cook celery only, and transfer it to a separate bowl when it's done.
6. let both cool off completely, maybe 30 mins or so.
Tip: Best to make sure carrots and celery totally cooked, water totally evaporated, no more water left. Not to overly add water, you can always add more water. When add water, best to add hot or boiling water in the process of cooking.
Best to cook until all water evaporated, not draining out of excess water. So to keep the fillings moisture only, not wet for wrapping.
Note: When you saute the carrots and celery, after adding water, put a cover on top of the pan, boil for about 10 mins, watch, when you see the water all boils down, test if veggie is cooked tender. Cook carrots and celery separately, don't mix for saute. Otherwise, some will cooked too tender and some not tender, the taste of the filling for the bite will taste terrible.
Note: If you don't use carrots and celery, use cabbage like the restaurants, do not cook, raw cabbage to mix with meat for wrapping, because shredded cabbage is easy to cook. (I never use cabbage, but you can try. Common sense tells me you don't want to cook it in advance). I use carrots and celery because they are always in my fridge stock. Cabbage easily goes bad so I don't have it.
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Prepare meat filling, Not cooking the meat is optional, raw meat can go directly into the wrap.
7. Cut meat into 1" long, like small pieces, about 3mm thick. Grounded ok too. (Do not buy ground meat, best to do it yourself or use a meat processor).
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Prepare to mix fillings
Mix cooked carrots and celery (dried, not watery) with the raw meat well in a large bowl, or two separate smaller bowls. (flexible).
Crack 3 eggs, keep egg white and yolk separately.
Leave egg white on a flat plate. (8" wide plate or larger).
On a clean, dry large baking pan (for 24 egg rolls ready to fry), or multi smaller plates, spread a thin layer of white flour on the entire plate(s), so the wrapped egg rolls would not stick on plate before frying.
Prepare a plate(s) with paper towels on bottom to store ready-to-serve egg rolls.
Have some paper towels around in case oil spills, you can wipe it off immediately.
Have a clean dry scooping spoon and bowl ready at frying site.
* During frying, if you see too much white flour drops frying around in frying pan, try to use a spoon or something to scoop it out. If you use a fryer, consult the manual of how to do it. Also you can scoop out fillings from broken wraps, in case.
Seasoning fillings
In the large bowl of mixed carrot, celery, and meat, add white wine, sugar, salt, oyster sauce, soy sauce, mix well. (Add add 1 tablespoon of cornstarch, optional, for the glue).
Add 1 or 2 egg yolk in seasoned mix, mix well, for glueing.
Put a spoon in bowl for filing.
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Prepare wrapping operation:
Gather a large, dry plate, the mixture bowl, a butter (with dull point) knife or a spoon, the plate with egg white in it, and a plate with egg roll wraps on top, and the empty plates with flour in it.
Note:
During wrapping and frying, no hole or broken wraps. Otherwise, the fillings will spill out in oil during frying, so frying operation has to stop. The egg rolls can't cook with loosen fillings flying around the oil. So you have to watch all the time.
Use wooden chopsticks to hold raw egg rolls (can use a scoop underneath to hold them), and use wooden chopsticks to move them around in oil. (don't use plastic or other materials because of high heat).
Wrapping Steps
Take out each wrap gently on a dry clean plate: the wrap on top is the inner layer of the egg roll you put in the filings, the bottom part is the outside of the wrap.
Place the wrap with one corner at the bottom (close to your body), the top away from your body, both corners on your left and right side of your body.
Use your finger dip into the egg white and spread around the edges of the wrap (maybe 1/4" deep), all around.
Imagine you wrap an envelope! -- Use the spoon or butter knife scoop some fillings onto wrap, maybe only 1/3 of the size of the wrap, near the lower part of the middle of the wrap close to your body side, start to roll up once or twice to the top of the wrap away from your body. (don't overfill, if filling is too heavy, the egg rolls will sink to the bottom of the wok for too long, not to rise, and will break).
Fold over the wrap over the filling once, then maybe roll once more toward the straight line across of both corners of both right and left side.
Wrap the corner on both right and left of the wrap over the fillings once, spread some egg white on both folded up corners.
Gently gather the fillings (if loosen up too much), form a straight line across both corners, spread some egg white in the middle of the line of the wrap.
At this point, maybe only 1/3 of whole wrap remain unwrapped, keep rolling once or twice, until to the fourth corner of the wrap at the top away from your body.
At the end of the corner, add more egg white and close the entire wrap.
Then hold up the complete wrap take a look, if you see both ends of the wrap show a little cracks, dip the wrap of both sides on the egg white plate and use your hand patch up the cracks a little.
Put the wrap on the flour plate, and keep each wrap separate.
The wrapping is done.
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Repeat wrapping steps for each wrap until all done, and keep wraps separately on the flour plate.
Note: Keep a dry cloth over the wraps that are not to cook immediately so the wraps won't dry up.
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If you use the wok and stove, heat the wok to medium/high (not high) first, pour oil in (only peanut oil or veggie oil, corn oil). If you stick t a wooden chopstick into oil, see it sizzle around the tip of the chopstick, it means the oil is ready at the right temp.
Use medium heat, use wooden chopsticks pick up wrap with a scoop at the bottom (so the wrap secure before you drop it into wok), slide the wrap near your body side, at the edge of the wok, gently into the oil, use the chopstick move it to the center of the wok gently right away from your side immediately, so it won't sink and get stuck in the bottom of the wok.
During the time, feel free to use the wooden chopstick to flip around the wraps gently so they spread more evenly in wok.
Tip: the color of the wrap may look light, brown, it may already been cooked thru. Once you take it out, it will turn darker. Mostly, it only take about 4 or 5 minutes (depends on the thickness of the wrap).
Try not to burn the wrap dark, it takes some practice.
Repeat this step until the wok filled with 4 or 5 wraps, not too close to start each frying process. Use your judgment, to increase or lower the heat of the oil. If oil 'jumps' out, take the entire wok away from the stove. Do this with great care!
Each wrap will take about 4 or 5 minute to cook thru. When you see the wrap rise and come out on top of the oil, you know this side is cooked, maybe flip it over the other side and cook more. If you see some wrap breaks, you need to take the whole wrap out right away. So you have to watch the whole time.
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After it's cooked, leave each on the clean dry plate, ready to serve.
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Tip:
If you use raw meat for filling, you have to use it all up within 1 or 2 days. For any leftover filling while wraps run out, you can use it for something else, but use it within the next day, because the raw and the cooked mix is not a durable food combination.
You can also cook the meat before mixing it in the fillings, then you can factor in less time to fry the wraps, and all the cooked filling leftover will last for 3 or 4 days, no worry for it to turn bad so quickly.
Use your good judgment and enjoy!
Mom