Southern Vietnamese spring rolls (cha gio)

It's really easy to make restaurant-quality spring rolls at home, and these crispy pork and mushroom beauties are no exception. Serve these crowd-pleasers with your favourite Asian dipping sauce.

• makes

  32

• prep

  20 minutes

• cook

  15 minutes

• difficulty

  Easy

Ingredients

• 10 g (¼ cup) dried wood ear mushrooms (see Note)
• 500 g minced pork
• 250 g green prawns, peeled, cleaned, finely chopped
• 1 small carrot, finely chopped
• 100 g (about ½ small) taro, finely chopped
• 1 spring onion, finely chopped
• 1 tsp white sugar
• 2 tsp chicken stock powder
• 1 packet spring roll wrappers
• vegetable oil, to deep-fry

Soaking time 20 minutes

Instructions

Soak mushrooms in a bowl of warm water for 20 minutes or until softened. Drain and squeeze to remove excess liquid. Remove and discard hard core and finely chop remainder.

Combine mushrooms, pork, prawns, carrot, taro and spring onion in a bowl. Season with 1¼ tsp salt, sugar and chicken stock powder.

Working with 4 wrappers at a time, place each at an angle on a work surface so they form a diamond shape. Place 1 tablespoonful of pork mixture in a horizontal line on the bottom half of each wrapper. Using a pastry brush, brush the two top edges of each wrapper with water, then fold up the bottom corner over the filling to cover. Fold in the sides of the wrappers and roll up tightly to enclose filling and form long rolls.

Place, seam-side down, on an oven tray and cover with a damp tea towel while repeating with remaining wrappers and pork mixture.

Fill a deep-fryer or large saucepan one-third full with vegetable oil and heat over medium heat to 170°C (or until a cube of bread turns golden in 15 seconds). Working in 4 batches, gently drop spring rolls into the oil and fry, turning halfway, for 3 minutes or until crisp and golden.

Remove spring rolls with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towel. Serve immediately.

Note

• Dried wood ear mushrooms are available from Asian food shops.

Photography by Olga Bennett.

Cook's Notes

Oven temperatures are for conventional; if using fan-forced (convection), reduce the temperature by 20˚C. | We use Australian tablespoons and cups: 1 teaspoon equals 5 ml; 1 tablespoon equals 20 ml; 1 cup equals 250 ml. | All herbs are fresh (unless specified) and cups are lightly packed. | All vegetables are medium size and peeled, unless specified. | All eggs are 55-60 g, unless specified.