Our All-time Favorite Spring Roll

We all have our favorite food. From sweets and desserts, beverages down to our meal. Just like you, I have my favorite too. I love cooking, baking and pastries also love to prepare hot and cold meals. That's because I love to eat, just kidding (a little bit) 😅, I love cooking since I was in elementary. Every Fiesta, I'm the one who's in charge of decorating the house and preparing and cooking one particular food. And that food is one of my all-time beloved foods, the spring rolls or lumpia.

Lumpia

Lumpia are various types of spring rolls. These are packed inside with flavorful fillings wrapped into egg-crisps or thin-paper-like pastry called “lumpia wrapper”.

This lumpia wrapper is a form of crepes but in this case, it's stronger and more elastic which makes it very durable in holding different types of stuffing from vegetables to chicken to beef and much more.

Here in the Philippines, there are various fillings used for making lumpia. Some budget fillings are cheese, luncheon meat, hotdogs, beef/meatloaves, mixed vegetables such as carrots, cabbage, sayote, and mung sprouts. Lumpia can also be either fresh (not cooked after filling) or deep-fried.

During special occasions such as birthdays, we commonly preparing lumpia with luncheon meat or ham and cheese if we're on a tight budget. However, if our budget was sufficient, we usually make lumpiang shanghai. This kind of lumpia is filled with ground pork/meat with minced mixed vegetables. Lumpiang shanghai is loved by many people, this delicious finger food compliments on all occasions.

Did you know?

The name lumpiang Shanghai hints at the Chinese origin of lumpia, which first traveled to the Philippines with ninth-century Chinese traders. Rolls similar to lumpia are made throughout Asia—in China, they're fried and called spring rolls (or egg rolls, in Chinese-American cooking).

https://www.epicurious.com/archive/cuisines/aroundtheworldin80dishes/philippineslumpiarecipe#:~:text=The%20name%20lumpiang%20Shanghai%20hints,in%20Chinese-American%20cooking).

Yesterday, we suffered from a wide power interruption, from 6 am to 6 pm and my partner got his day off from work. It's just a typical day aside from the blackout. To make the day special and fulfilling despite the absence of electricity, we cooked them some lumpiang shanghai. My kids love spring rolls so much, we all have the same taste in food.

Before Saturday comes, my partner brought meatballs from the hypermarket he worked from. At first, he wanted to make some sweet and sour meatballs, however, his mind changed when his off was near to come. He thought of making lumpia out of the meatballs.

Please let me share with you our simple Lumpiang Shanghai.

Ingredients:

Meatballs (you can use ground meat instead of this)

Mung sprouts or Toge (in Tagalog)

Oyster Sauce

Onion and garlic

Lumpia Wrapper (I used two packs for this recipe)

500ml Cooking oil for deep frying

*if you will use ground meat you can add some condiments such as black pepper and broth cubes

In this recipe, the meatballs were already seasoned with flavors that's why we don't need any seasonings.

So these are the ingredients. (see image below)

Meatballs, Oyster sauce, and mung sprouts.

1. First, mash or pound the meatballs using a spoon. This is to create it into ground meat. As you can see the meatballs already consist of minced carrots, so we didn't need to add carrots to this recipe.

1. Second, add the oyster sauce for extra flavor. We love the taste of the oyster sauce in our cooking. It will add extra taste to the food.

1. Third, minced the mung sprouts. You can add it without chopping it, however, our kids don't like it, so for them to consume it without noticing the sprouts, mincing it is the best option.

1. Then, add the minced mung sprouts to the ground meat.

1. Mix well. And here it is, the filling is ready to be wrapped.

*Sorry I forgot to take a photo of the lumpia wrapper.

(Here's what it looks like)

1. Wrap the stuffing into the Olympia wrapper. In this recipe, I used a spoon for estimating the amount or portions of the stuffing to be covered.

Here's my wrapped lumpiang Shanghai. It's ready for cooking! This photo was only 1/4 of the wrapped spring rolls. Approximately, we made more than 60 pcs.

1. Deep-fry it until golden brown and crispy.

1. Served and enjoy! You can eat this as finger food or pair it with your hot steamed rice.

You can try this recipe at home, I know most people can do it. There's nothing so special about this recipe, however, it was cooked and prepared with love so, this simple recipe turned out into an extra special one.

Hope you enjoyed this article. I'm still polishing my unfinished articles that's why I'd only share with you the moments we had yesterday with the help of this food.

@eommaZel ✍🏻🥀