Cha gio (Vietnamese spring rolls)

The first time I made this without my mother, I felt an overwhelming sense of accomplishment. I felt like I crossed the threshold into good Vietnamese hostess-dom -- my mother often has these in her freezer, ready to fry up if unexpected guests pop by or her grown children come to visit & feel like pigging out on these in the middle of the night.  I have fond memories watching Vietnamese music videos with her as she rolled these -- my job was to peel the spring roll wrappers so they'd be ready for her to use. I like having these for guests and also for an easy midweek dinner of bun cha gio. Once you get the rolling down, this is an easy appetizer/meal component that is dangerously addictive.

I make these with ground chicken because I think they're a little lighter, but in Vietnam they are made with ground pork. Some recipes will also call for thinly sliced mushrooms, but my mother never put them in hers so I don't put them in mine. I make a big batch of these and freeze them -- when you're ready to make them, you just throw them right into the fryer, you don't have to thaw them out. They last about 2 months (although I confess I've kept them longer) in the freezer.

Cha gio 

(makes 50 or more, depending on how you roll them)

1 lb. ground chicken

1 lb. shrimp, peeled

1 carrot, shredded

1/2 med. onion, chopped

1 sm. package of vermicelli

2 eggs  

2 tbspns. fish sauce

Ground pepper

1 package spring roll wrappers, thawed*

Lettuce leaves, separated from their core (use a soft lettuce like green or red lettuce, which are good for rolling)

Vegetable oil for frying

In small bowl, soak the vermicelli noodles in warm water until they are soft. The vermicelli noodles for this recipe are like glass noodles, and are sold in little packages in sets of six like this:

 While the noodles are soaking, place the shrimp in a food processor and pulse until chopped (avoid making it into a paste). Mix the ground shrimp with the ground chicken, fish sauce, carrots, 1 egg & onion. When the noodles are soft, cut them with a kitchen scissor so that the strands are about 2 inches or so in length, and add to the meat mixture. Add some black pepper. Get down and dirty -- mix the mixture with your hands (my mom wears gloves).





Cut the spring roll wrappers diagonally so that you have two sets of triangle shaped wrappers. If you set up your rolling station like the photo from the beginning of this post, you won't have to move until you're done. Crack the 2nd egg, whisk it and place it in a small bowl.

Take a spring roll wrapper (be careful peeling it away from the other wrappers -- they rip easily as they thaw) and place it on a plate, the pointy side facing away from you. Fold the two corners over toward the center as pictured below. Place about a fat pinky's worth of the meat mixture onto the middle toward the bottom of the wrapper. Fight the temptation to put too much meat into these spring rolls -- the thicker you make them, the harder it'll be for you to deep fry them batch after batch without ending up with a raw center. Fold the two sides of the wrapper over the mixture, and roll up. The tricky part here is applying the right amount of pressure -- you don't want a roll that's wrapped too loosely because you don't want it to fall apart, and have random crisp pieces of wrapper. Also, it's ugly once it's all fried up. Once you get to the top, spread some of the egg on the pointy part of the wrapper to seal it to the rest of the roll. Repeat repeat repeat until you run out of the meat mixture.

Heat up the vegetable oil for deep frying -- I don't know the exact temperature, my family uses a wooden chopstick to test the temp. If we place the tip of the chopstick in the oil and little bubbles form around the chopstick, it's ready. You can also use a deep fryer. Depending on what size pot you're using to deep fry these rolls, I would say place about 7-8 of these in the oil at a time when you fry them. Turn them around with a spider. When they are nice and golden, remove them from the oil and place on a plate with a paper towel. Repeat to cook as many as you need. For bun cha gio, you could place about 3-4 per person. As an appetizer, you can plan for about 5 pp. Roll up these rolls in a piece of lettuce, dip into nuoc cham, and enjoy!

* You can purchase spring roll wrappers in the freezer section of any Asian grocery store. There is usually two sizes -- get the bigger one for this recipe.