Egg Roll in a Bowl - Easy Egg Roll Salad - Food Wishes

[Music] hello this is chef john from foodwishes.com with egg roll in a bowl that's right you might think this was invented to avoid all that time-consuming wrapping in messy deep-frying but it wasn't it was invented by the keto people because they can't eat egg roll wrappers but you know who can eat egg roll wrappers this guy so instead of what's really egg roll filling in a bowl we are gonna do the real thing in all its tasty and textural glory and to get started let's go ahead and prep what makes this version so vastly superior and that would be some crispy fried wonton strips except we're not going to fry them we're going to bake them which is way way easier and less messy and what we'll do is cut up about three to four wonton wrappers per person into approximately quarter inch strips and once that's been accomplished we'll go ahead and transfer that down to a pan then we'll drizzle over a little bit of vegetable oil and toss them until they're all coated and then finally we will spread those out so they bake nice and evenly and yes of course you can deep fry these to make them crispy which would be a lot faster but also a lot messier and if we're doing something called egg roll in a bowl to avoid the messy frying then deep frying these strips does not make a lot of sense and that's it once we have those thoughtfully spread out we will simply pop those into the center of a 350 degree oven for about 12 minutes or so or until they are beautifully browned and believe it or not that's all there is to this as soon as those cool down they're going to become beautifully crispy and we will simply set those aside and use them later to top our bowl and that's it once that's set we can move on to our vegetable prep and today i'll be using some green cabbage and carrot which are the most common vegetables used in egg roll filling and i'm just going to use half of this little savoy cabbage and after cutting that in half we will quarter it at which point it's going to be very easy to trim off that core on the bottom and while you can buy one of those pre-cut coleslaw mixes i really hope you don't because by the time you get one of those they're like three or four days old as i hope you can see here it really is pretty fast and easy to do and why this is so simple is because as you may know a head of cabbage is made up of many many layers of leaves and when you slice those thinly across like this after just a minute or two of slicing you're going to have a big old pile of beautifully shredded cabbage and because we're using a knife sharp knife and not a giant dull vegetable chopper like at the store ours is going to taste sweet and fresh as opposed to theirs which tastes old and bitter and nobody and i mean nobody likes old and bitter and that's it once we have that sliced up we can transfer that into a bowl and we will move on to prepping our carrot which i like to do with one of these japanese style mandolins which makes beautiful uniform matchsticks and by the way leave one end on the table i pick mine up so you can see the pieces falling down which added absolutely nothing to the presentation but anyway the point is that's a fast and easy way to do this but if you don't have one don't worry because i know you have a potato peeler and you can simply prep your carrots by making nice peels like this and that will work just about the same so to summarize there's no reason to buy the pre-made cabbage and carrot slaw mix since start to finish that's only going to take you about five minutes and then besides our two main ingredients i also decided to do a little bit of julienne red pepper mostly because i had some in the fridge we can also if we want to do some freshly sliced green onions as well as some minced garlic plus pretty much any other veggies we find in the fridge we want to use up and that's it the last thing we should prep before we head to the stove would be our very simple sauce which will start with some soy and then to that we will add some rice vinegar as well as if you have it some sake wine or chinese rice wine or if times are tough just a little bit of regular white wine or if time's really really tough nothing okay that's optional we'll also add a little touch of sesame oil as well as a little bit of white sugar followed by some freshly and very finely grated ginger and of course a little bit of cayenne never hurts when combined with a little touch of white pepper and if you don't have that use some freshly ground black but if you have some the white pepper is really nice here and then we will finish up a little touch of ketchup as well as the secret ingredient here about a half a teaspoon of corn starch and that's it we'll simply give that a stir until that's all dissolved and what that little bit of cornstarch is going to do later when we mix this into our meat and vegetables is that it's going to tighten up and thicken those juices just a bit and any and all of our accumulated juices are going to become more of a glaze and that's it once that's been mixed up we can head to the stove where we will transfer a half pound of ground pork into a skillet set over medium-high heat and then what we'll do is go ahead and break this up and crumble it as it browns and no we don't need to add any oil if we're going to use pork since it's going to have plenty of fat which is one of the reasons that's my choice here but having said that pretty much any ground meat is going to work here okay turkey chicken beef being obvious alternative choices so use what you want i mean you are after all the billy joel of your egg roll in a bowl and speaking of new york state of mind the next time i have some leftover pastrami i am going to use it for this unfortunately leftover pastrami's not really a thing and then once i had that broken up pretty well with the wooden spatula i switched to something a little more flexible and spoony but anyway no matter what meat you use we want to make sure we break it up nice and small and cook it until we get a little bit of brown crustification on the surface alright you see that that is going to taste better than non-brown meat oh and if you do happen to use one of those leaner choices you'll probably have to add a little bit of oil to the pan so this happens but that's fine that is just you cooking and then once we're happy with how our meat looks we'll go ahead and dump in our vegetable mixture and we will take our tongs and carefully mix that in and then very important we are only going to cook this for like one or two minutes or until those vegetables just start to soften and become flexible all right we don't want to cook these vegetables all the way through at this point or any point so we're going to cook those very briefly or until they look a little something like this at which point we can stir in our sauce and by the time that's been mixed in and our vegetables have cooked maybe one more minute everything should be ready which means we can pull it off the heat and transfer it into a bowl and in case you're keeping score at home the amounts seen in this video are going to make two portions and then once we have our egg roll filling bold we will top that with our crispy wonton strips plus if you want a few more sliced green onion which i think looked nice especially for the contractually obligated pictures and that's it our actual egg roll in a bowl is now ready to enjoy and if you're wondering if those few crispy wonton chips on top really make that big of a difference well yes they do i mean don't get me wrong the filling's amazing but this is not gonna taste or feel like an egg roll without that crispy crunchy wonton wrapper and by the way is a few grams of carbs really a deal breaker come on i mean you look fine but anyway suit yourself and i don't believe egg rolls have ever been considered a health food but presented in this format what we're eating here is basically a big old bowl of vegetables seasoned with a little bit of meat all right there's only four ounces of pork in this whole bowl so it really is mostly vegetables and very similar to the ratio you get in an actual egg roll and of course in a restaurant that's done because the vegetable filler is much cheaper and it's a lot better for the chef's food cost all right those chinese zodiac placemats don't pay for themselves but regardless of the reason this ratio really works and as far as the flavor goes this stuff tastes exactly exactly like a really really good egg roll and yet we've avoided all that time consuming rolling them up and that smelly messy deep frying which is why i really do hope you give this a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] you

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 254,799

Keywords: Egg, Roll, Bowl, chinese, Asian, fast, no-fry, low carb, easy, best, recipe, technique, chef, john, food, wishes, cooking

Id: xxQoaAHlIdo

Length: 8min 36sec (516 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 30 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Churlish_Grambungle]

I’ve made this version of this dish like 15 times and it’s always great. We have it over rice. I highly recommend a few shakes of 5 spice to achieve that distinct flavor.