How to Make Homemade Egg Rolls to Celebrate Chinese New Year

Would you believe that making homemade egg rolls is not too hard? If you like egg rolls, but want a healthier version, learn how to make homemade egg rolls with this recipe and tutorial!

Love me some Chinese Food, but Chinese buffets gross me out. MSG, tons of salt, questionable meat, way too many calories, artificial food colors. Not good. A while back I decided to give homemade egg rolls a shot, and I was not disappointed.

The hardest part about making these egg rolls is the anticipation that it will be a LOT of work. It’s really NOT, though. And the end result is very delicious! I highly recommend giving it a shot!

How to Make Homemade Egg Rolls

Here’s how to make your own egg rolls!

• Ingredients:
  • Egg Roll Wraps (you’ll find these in the produce section of the grocery store)
  • 1 lb meat (the recipe calls for ground pork, but I generally use less and it’s mostly leftover chicken picked from the chicken carcass)
  • 1 tsp minced ginger
  • 2 cups cabbage, finely chopped (I shred the cabbage and carrot in my handy dandy food processor. I love that machine!)
  • 1/4 lb bean sprouts
  • 1/2 cup carrot, shredded
  • 3 green onions, finely chopped
  • 2 TBSP oyster sauce

(I almost always make substitutions when I cook. For instance, when I made these I didn’t have any bean sprouts.
They would have been much better with them, but I made them anyway…)

Once you’ve got your ingredients prepped:

1. Stir fry meat (if you’re using raw meat) and ginger in skillet over high heat until lightly browned, 2-3 minutes. Since I use pre-cooked meat, I add the meat later. Add cabbage, bean sprouts, carrots, and green onions. Cook for 2 minutes.

2. Stir in oyster sauce. Let mixture cool.

3. Now get ready to wrap! You’ll need a pastry brush and a little bit of water. Use 2 TBSP of your meat/veggie mixture and place it on the wrap like so:

Fold the bottom corner up and tuck it under the meat. The directions are also on the Egg Roll Wrapper package. They show the wrappers as square though, and they’re really rectangular. So it’s a little bit trickier than the directions make it look.

Then roll it up tightly.

Smooth everything out and even it up the best you can. Then you need to fold over the two sides to make an envelope looking package. Put a small amount of water on the wrapper so the sides stick together nicely.

Finish rolling and add a bit more water to the top, so the egg roll stays closed.

Add your egg roll to your pile! And repeat until you’ve used up all of your ingredients.

Now you can fry your egg rolls or bake them. If you fry them, heat oil to 350F in a large skillet. Place rolls flap side down, a few at a time (don’t crowd them), turn occasionally until golden, about 2-3 minutes. Drain them on paper towels, or a regular kitchen towels if you don’t use paper towels like me. If you’re curious about no paper towels, you can read more here.

If you’d prefer to bake them, Heat your oven to 400F. Place rolls on a baking sheet sprayed with cooking spray. Lightly brush the tops with olive oil and bake until golden brown, about 10-12 minutes.

After they’ve cooled, you can freeze them for quick meals or snacks! Or, you can eat them before they make it to the table! 🙂

Do you make homemade egg rolls? What do you think?