Colorful Fresh Spring Rolls
By Jenny Shadoff of Jennybeaned
These simple, fresh vegetable spring rolls are great as an appetizer or a light meal and are a match made in heaven when paired with a creamy nut-based sauce.
The wonderful thing about making fresh spring rolls is that they’re totally customizable to whatever ingredients you have on hand and you can make the wraps as large or as small as you’d like. To show off the beauty in these colorful vegan rolls, I picked bell peppers, red cabbage, cucumber and carrots. If you want more filling rolls, you can add tofu or vermicelli noodles to bulk it up.
Working with rice paper can sound like a daunting task, soaking for too long or too little can cause the wrap to fall apart or not be able to be wrapped at all. Luckily with a little bit of practice, making these delicious and easy wraps are a cinch! There are a few things to note before tackling fresh spring rolls. They’re best served shortly after being made as the rice roll dries out and hardens the longer it’s exposed to air. If you’re serving these as an appetizer for a group, make sure you’re not using paper plates. Because the rolls are moist, they tend to stick and would grab a chunk of plate along with the roll.
Colorful Vegan Fresh Spring Rolls
Fresh Rolls Ingredients
12 rice paper wrappers
12 butter lettuce leaves
1 red bell pepper, seeded and thinly sliced
2 carrots, peeled and julienned
½ English cucumber, thinly sliced
¼ head of red cabbage, thinly sliced
1 bunch of fresh mint leaves
Make sure your workspace is clean and organized with a cutting board as your main working area. Place ingredients around the workspace and fill a plate with water. Place it near your cutting board.
Dip a rice paper wrapper in the plate, circle it around so that the entire surface is moistened and leave submerged for about 20 seconds. Transfer the paper onto your cutting board and place a lettuce leaf on the bottom half of the wrap. Lay the pepper, carrots, cucumber, cabbage and mint leaves in the center of the lettuce.
Starting from the bottom of the wrapper, start to roll the wrapper and all ingredients toward the center. Fold the left and right sides of the wrapper towards the center and continue wrapping up the roll. Place your finished roll to the side and repeat for your remaining rolls.
Serve the spring rolls with any sauce you like (I used almond butter and hoisin sauce). Rolls are best consumed the same day.
