Melanie's Homemade Egg Rolls..

One of the things my family loves is Asian food.  For some odd reason, I've never tried to make it on my own.  It just seemed easier to purchase the frozen varieties.  Boy, have we been missing out!

One of my new "resolutions" for my family is that we begin eating a healthier diet without all of the added poisons found in prepared foods these days.  My heart's desire is to have my own little "mini farm" and garden to prepare our own foods so I know exactly where they came from and what all is in it!

Anyway, I decided we would have a great, Asian meal so I set out to cook my own egg rolls along with some fried rice and sweet & sour chicken.  BEST DECISION EVER!  These egg rolls were super easy and so very good!

I looked up a few recipes... that's what I do!  When I want to make something I've never made before, I look up about five recipes and then I create my own.  When I look up all of these recipes I figure out what they all have in common and go from there... mainly looking for cooking times and oven temps.

Here's what I came up with:

I started out by purchasing egg roll wrappers found in the produce section at my grocery store.  Now, ideally I should have made my own wrappers, but that I left to another day!

I gathered all the ingredients I would need:

Egg roll wrappers
2 T cooking oil
Shredded cabbage/carrot mix (yes, in the bag! - I'm not there quite yet!!)
container of bean sprouts (next to the egg roll wrappers)
1/2 yellow onion, minced
2 green onions, minced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 lb pork, chopped into very small pieces
1 t. ginger
Soy sauce
Salt & Pepper

In a skillet, heat oil.  Add garlic and onions and saute until done.  Add pork and cook until done.  Add cabbage, carrots and bean sprouts and stir fry until completely cooked.  About halfway through cooking, add ginger, soy sauce to your liking and salt & pepper.  Cook thoroughly.
<<< It will look like this!
Remove the mixture from heat and allow to cool enough to work with.  Once cool, grab a wrapper and place on the counter as shown below and proceed to wrap about 2 tablespoons of mixture into each wrapper.


Place the mixture close to the corner facing you and form into an oval as shown.







Fold up once, then left corner and right corner to the inside.










Then, finish rolling.  It's very easy!







CHOOSE your cooking method:

OVEN:  Preheat oven to 350 and GENEROUSLY spray cookie sheet with non-stick spray.  Arrange egg rolls on cookie sheet with sides not touching.  My recipe made 12 large egg rolls, but could have easily made 18 smaller ones.  SPRAY tops and sides of egg rolls with non-stick spray and bake for about 20 minutes until crispy and brown.

DEEP FRYER:  Preheat frying oil to 350 and deep fry egg rolls until golden brown.

ENJOY!

Once you make these simple egg rolls, you will never go back to frozen!!  Now you can adjust your recipe and make many different flavors.  Let me know if you try them!

~God Bless, Melanie