Thai Spring Rolls with Pork & Prawns

Thai Spring Rolls with Pork & Prawns are crispy, crunchy, and absolutely delicious.

Inside is the perfect mix of rice noodles, mushrooms, prawns, minced pork, carrots, bamboo shoots and beansprouts. All flavoured with garlic, chillies, coriander and fish sauce. Fantastic with some sweet or hot chilli sauce for dipping.

Using ready-made spring roll wrappers from Chinese and other Asian supermarkets, Thai Spring Rolls are surprisingly easy to make at home.

Jump to Recipe

SPRING ROLLS

Who doesn’t love a tasty, crispy spring roll? Packed with vegetables and perhaps meat and/or seafood these wrapped East and South East Asian delicacies are the perfect finger food. Which I think makes them ideal to serve as part of a buffet or party menu.

Spring rolls are amongst the vast range of foods found in the style of Chinese eating called dim sum. These are small, bite-sized portions of food. Think of it as the Asian version of Spanish tapas or Middle Eastern mezze.

Thought to have originated in China, versions of spring roll are also found in Japan, South Korea, Indonesia and the Philippines (where they’re known as lumpia) as well as Vietnam and Thailand. As part of my New Year’s Eve buffet, I’m going to serve some stunning Thai-inspired spring rolls.

You’ll find a detailed recipe card for Thai Spring Rolls at the end of this post. What follows is step-by-step guide with pictures.

THAI SPRING ROLLS FILLING

The filling for my Thai Spring Rolls is a delicious mix of rice noodles, Chinese mushrooms, prawns, minced pork, carrots, bamboo shoots and beansprouts. I flavour these with garlic, chillies, coriander, and the powerful Thai fish sauce known as nam pla.

Making the spring roll filling is simple enough. I mix soaked and drained rice noodles and mushrooms with fried chillies and garlic, browned pork mince, cooked prawns and the prepared vegetables.

You don’t have to use my combination of veg: swap in cabbage, red pepper, or water chestnuts if you like.

Just make sure you shred or chop them quite finely. That way they’ll cook in the few minutes it takes to deep fry the spring rolls.

SPRING ROLL WRAPPERS

I confess that I buy my spring roll wrappers from the Chinese supermarket. Although they’re made from a simple flour and water dough, rolled very thinly, this is a skill I’ve not yet learned. So, for the time being anyway, I buy ones which just need defrosting before use.

You’ll find lots of different pancakes and wrappers available. But make sure you get spring roll wrappers and not rice papers. The latter are used by soaking in water, rolling around a filling and are then eaten straight away. They’re not usually suitable for frying.

Make sure you work with one wrapper at a time. Cover the remainder with a damp tea towel to stop them drying out and going brittle.

Using 15 centimetre square wrappers, you should get approximately 24 spring rolls with my recipe.

WRAPPING THAI SPRING ROLLS

The neat wrapping up of the spring rolls does take a little practice. But as long as you don’t overfill them you should be fine. A little paste of flour and water seals the edge to stop them unrolling.

• Put a spring roll wrapper on the work top in front of you.
• Put about a tablespoon of the mixture slightly less than half way up the wrapper.

• Bring up the bottom edge to cover the filling
• Fold in the two vertical edges.
• Roll the wrapper up, but stop about 1cm away from the top edge.
• Using a pastry brush, spread a little flour paste along the top edge then finish rolling up.

FRYING, STORING & SERVING

You can use a deep fryer to cook your spring rolls. But I like to deep fry them in a wok, a few at a time, as it’s more roomy. However, do be careful deep frying; a temperature-controlled deep fryer is probably the safer option if you’re not used to deep frying in a wok.

If you’re not eating them right away (but I guarantee you won’t be able to resist eating at least one), put the spring rolls on cooling racks to go completely cold. Then you can refrigerate or freeze.

I’m a big fan of make ahead dishes. And I think that’s doubly important when you’ve got guests and a lot of food to make. So of course I make my spring rolls in advance. Once cold, I freeze them on cling-film lined trays before transferring to freezer bags. I then take out as many as I want and defrost them overnight in the fridge.

To reheat Thai Spring Rolls, pop into a medium, pre-heated oven for 10-15 minutes.

Heaped on a platter with a big bowl of sweet or hot chilli sauce for dipping, these flavoursome, crunchy delights are sure to be a hit with your guests. Just make sure they leave some for the cook!

5 from 1 vote

Print

Thai Spring Rolls with Pork & Prawns

Crunchy on the outside, inside is the perfect mix of rice noodles, mushrooms, prawns, minced pork, carrots, bamboo shoots and beansprouts. All flavoured with garlic, chillies, coriander and fish sauce.

Using ready-made spring roll wrappers Thai Spring Rolls are surprisingly easy to make at home.

Course Appetizer, Side Dish, Snack

Cuisine Chinese, Thai, Asian

Prep Time 45 minutes

Cook Time 30 minutes

Total Time 1 hour 15 minutes

Servings 24 spring rolls

Author Moorlands Eater

Ingredients

• 1 tbsp plain white flour
• 24 x 15cm square spring roll wrappers defrosted if frozen
• oil for deep frying
• sweet or hot chilli dipping sauce to serve

For the filling:

• 15 g Chinese dried mushrooms
• 50 g dried rice noodles
• 1 tbsp oil
• 6 cloves garlic finely chopped
• 2-3 red chillies finely chopped
• 250 g minced pork
• 75 g cooked, peeled prawns roughly chopped
• 2-4 tbsp Thai fish sauce
• 1-2 tsp sugar
• freshly ground black pepper
• 120 g carrot, julienned or grated
• 50 g tinned bamboo shoots drained, finely chopped
• 60 g beansprouts
• 4 spring onions finely chopped
• 2 tbsp coriander leaf, including stalks roughly chopped
• red chilli flakes optional

Instructions

To make the filling:

1. Soak the dried mushrooms in boiling water for 30 mins. Drain and chop finely.
   

2. Soak the rice noodles in boiling water for 10 min. Drain, cool under running water and squeeze to get rid of excess water. Cut into short lengths using scissors.
   

3. Heat 1 tbsp oil in a large frying pan or wok then add the garlic and chillies. Stir fry until browned (2-3 min). Remove to a large bowl, leaving the oil behind.

4. Add the minced pork to the pan or wok and fry until browned (5-8 min).
   

5. Turn off the heat and add to the frying pan or wok the chopped mushrooms, rice noodles and prawns. Stir in 2 tbsp fish sauce, 1 tsp sugar and some black pepper. Set aside to cool.

6. Take the bowl with the fried garlic and chillies and add the carrots, bamboo shoots, beansprouts, spring onions and coriander leaf.
   

7. When the pork, mushroom, noodle and prawn mixture has cooled, tip it into the large bowl containing the carrots etc. mix everything together well.
   

8. Taste the seasoning and if necessary add more fish sauce, black pepper, sugar or some chilli flakes.
   

To make the spring rolls

1. In a small bowl, mix together 1 tbsp flour and enough water to make a smooth paste.
   

2. Taking one spring roll wrapper at a time (leave the rest under a wet towel to stop them drying out), place 1 tbsp of the filling slightly less than half way up the wrapper.
   

   

3. Bring up the bottom edge of the wrapper to cover the filling then fold in the two vertical edges.
   

   

4. Roll the wrapper up, stopping approx 1cm away from the top edge. Brush some of the flour & water paste along the top edge then roll up.
   

5. Heat oil in a deep fryer or a large wok. When hot, carefully fry the spring rolls in batches until crisp and golden, draining on kitchen paper and the putting on wire cooling racks.
   

6. If not eating straight away, leave until completely cold then refrigerate or freeze. Defrost before reheating in a moderate oven for 10-15 minutes.

   Serve with chilli sauce for dipping.