Lumpia

It's been a while, but I've been away cooking for the family and, technically, for you too. So here's some lumpia for you. That's pronounced loom-pya. Also known as spring rolls or egg rolls or lumpia Shanghai, etc. In the Philippines, it's all called lumpia.

 

 

It's ridiculously simple. You can put whatever the heck you want into an egg roll--not just Asian ingredients. You could easily use leftovers to stuff lumpia. I actually stumbled onto a breakfast egg roll recipe the other day, and I think I'm going to try it with the extra wrappers I have.

Here's my lumpia combination:

• Spring roll wrappers (I use the brand Menlo)
• 2 tbsp. canola oil
• 1 small to medium onion, diced
• 5 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1/2 lb. ground turkey
• 1/2 lb. ground beef
• 2 carrots, julienned
• 1 cup daikon, julienned
• 3-4 cups Napa cabbage, chiffonade
• 2 cups bean sprouts
• 1/4 or more cilantro, chiffonade
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Soy sauce, about 3-4 tbsp. or to taste

Add oil to a pan and sweat the onions. Add the garlic until fragrant then toss in the ground meats, seasoning with salt and pepper and mixing them together as you brown.



You'll get to a point where your meat will have browned and you'll be left with liquid from the meat. Don't ladle this out. Keep mixing your meat until all the liquid is gone and is reabsorbed into your meat, another 15 minutes. Built-in flavor. (Thanks Marco Pierre White; check out the video at about 54 seconds.)

From there, add the carrots, daikon, cabbage, bean sprouts, and cilantro. Mix until well incorporated. Add soy sauce to taste. Allow to cool.

Wrap your lumpia into about 2 1/2 inch thick rolls. There's a great diagram on the Menlo wrapper packaging, showing how to wrap lumpia.

 

Then fry them up! We decided to grill them since we already had the grill going with kalbi. And yes, they do get crispy if grilled. These can also be baked. And they freeze well to save for later.