What are egg rolls?

[Jeannie]

I was having a look at some of the old threads and there was one about the best sauce for egg rolls which reminded me that I still DON'T HAVE A CLUE what these things are.

I don't think I've ever seen them on a chinese menu in the UK.

My mum makes these egg jiaozi when she invites people over for dinner sometimes. She makes these by cooking a very thin layer of beaten egg moulded over the back of a ladle to make egg "skins". These she then fill with a minced pork mixture to make them jiaozi shaped.

These things are usually put into a soup of many other ingredients. She tends to make them on special occasions eg New Year as they represent gold ingots and thus lucky.

This is the only thing I can think of when people mention eggrolls. Are eggrolls an American thing?

[Sleepy_Dragon]

It varies by region, but around the Pacific NW in the US, egg rolls are sort of a catch-all phrase for the different kinds of spring rolls (tsun gurn). People who use "egg roll" as a generic term mean both the fried crunchy thin skinned rolls, and the fried ones with the thicker more doughy skin, but on actual menus, the thin skinned ones are spring rolls and the thick skinned ones egg rolls.

I have no idea how these things came to be known as egg rolls though. The only egg my mother ever used in them was a little bit dabbed onto the corners of the wrapper to seal them up.

Pat

[Rachel Perlow]

The only way to get that bubbly texture all over the surface of a thick skinned egg roll is to coat the entire roll in an egg wash after it has been shaped, before deep frying. That's why it's called an egg roll as far as I know.

[Sleepy_Dragon]

Hehe is that all it is? All this time I thought it was something special about the wrapper itself!

Pat

[Rachel Perlow]

Have you ever tried frying a roll wrapped with the thicker egg roll wrapper without egg washing it? It just doesn't look or taste right.

[Sleepy_Dragon]

Never tried to actually make the thick kind, because I don't like them. So for the longest time I was content/apathetic enough to leave the origins of egg rolls and blisters shrouded in mystery!

Pat

[Jason Perlow]

Egg Rolls -- a Chinese-American classic.

[Gifted Gourmet]

These eggrolls are beginning to look somewhat familiar ...

deja-vu all over again??

[dougery]

A bit of a cultural detour but I found lumpia wrappers to be the lightest and crispiest wrappers. Definitely a good alternative if you are looking to experiment.

Also for desert you can wrap banana's in this, fry them, then serve with a carmelized brown sugar/butter combo (my wife's dad is the best at making these). Good stuff!

[Gary Soup]

My wife also makes the egg jiaozi (dan jiao) at New Years, and also to serve with hot pot. It's quite labor intensive, considering that each tiny "omelette" is made from about 1/10th of an egg.

She also makes literal egg rolls (dan juan) which consist of minced pork and shrimp rolled up in a thin omelette skin and steamed. I've seen a similar dish called "The Dragon" described in a book on classical Chinese cuisine.

Of course, "Egg Roll" is the American term for Spring Roll (chun juan). They are definitely Chinese in origin, though there are Americanized versions (like the ones in Jason's photos). The ones my wife and her family make look just about like the picture below. They're a bit larger than what the Filipinos call "Shanghai Lumpia" but not as big as most Chinese-American versions.

[Gary Soup]

Egg Rolls -- a Chinese-American classic.

Atctually, the more I look at these pictures, the more they look like chimichangas to me...

[Jason Perlow]

Yeah, but these particular ones are good. Damnned good.

[TatarsHat]

Great pics..

I am a little confused though.. Egg rolls are made to the best of my knowledge with a Wonton type wrapper. They can be great if homemade, although most fall short where I live from a local Chinese restaurant. Spring Rolls are a totally different animal. Much lighter due to the wrapper and personally my fav. I make a ton of them. Vietnamese Rolls are see though. Rice paper. Very delicate and tasty. Of course the options of fillings for all of these run the gamut!!!

[Gary Soup]

Great pics..

I am a little confused though..  Egg rolls are made to the best of my knowledge with a Wonton type wrapper.  They can be great if homemade, although most fall short where I live from a local Chinese restaurant.  Spring Rolls are a totally different animal.  Much lighter due to the wrapper and personally my fav.  I make a ton of them.  Vietnamese Rolls are see though.  Rice paper.  Very delicate and tasty.  Of course the options of fillings for all of these run the gamut!!!

It's just a matter of terminology. What in China are called "chun juan" (LITERALLY "spring rolls") are, in fact, made with a wonton-type wrapper. They are never called egg rolls (or its Chinese equivalent) in China. In San Francisco as well, they are called spring rolls more often than not, except for the neighborhood-type Chinese-Amercan restaurants.

[Squeat Mungry]

Great pics..

I am a little confused though..  Egg rolls are made to the best of my knowledge with a Wonton type wrapper.  They can be great if homemade, although most fall short where I live from a local Chinese restaurant.  Spring Rolls are a totally different animal.  Much lighter due to the wrapper and personally my fav.  I make a ton of them.  Vietnamese Rolls are see though.  Rice paper.  Very delicate and tasty.  Of course the options of fillings for all of these run the gamut!!!

It's just a matter of terminology. What in China are called "chun juan" (LITERALLY "spring rolls") are, in fact, made with a wonton-type wrapper. They are never called egg rolls (or its Chinese equivalent) in China. In San Francisco as well, they are called spring rolls more often than not, except for the neighborhood-type Chinese-Amercan restaurants.

I can vouch for this. In fact, I can only remember having 'egg rolls' on the East Coast. Here they are almost invariably called 'spring rolls'.

Squeat

[Rachel Perlow]

But on the east coast (of America) egg rolls and spring rolls appear on the same menus. Spring rolls have the thin crispy skin (as in Gary Soup's picture), while egg rolls have a chewier, crunchy, skin with that bubbly texture on the outside.

[Squeat Mungry]

Rachel, that's a very good point, and I do seem to remember having eaten both kinds out here, but I just do not think of 'egg rolls' as a commonly-found menu item in San Francisco.

Minutes later:

Okay now I have to eat crow. I just fished out the menu from my favorite Chinese ('Mandarin Style') place, and they have both 'Vegetable Egg Roll' (appetizer) and 'Steam Egg Roll' (dum sim) and no 'spring roll' at all!

I'm sure others like Gary Soup and jschyun know way more about this than I do, and hope they'll help clarify the situation. In any case, I'll do some investigation on my own, and report back if I find anything definitive.

Squeat

[Jon Tseng]

Aren't there also those sweet biscuit things you get in tins. Look like long, thin cigars. Baked egg-enriched pastry. Thoughts those were egg rolls to

J

[dougery]

Actually, the more I look at these pictures, the more they look like chimichangas to me...

you crack me up!

[LittleMissCrepe]

Aren't there also those sweet biscuit things you get in tins. Look like long, thin cigars. Baked egg-enriched pastry. Thoughts those were egg rolls to

Jon, I'm pretty sure you're right. The literal translation of the name of this snackfood, at least from Cantonese, is "egg roll." (I'm also looking at a tin of these on my office desk, and they also call them Egg Rolls in parentheses above the Chinese characters.) I love these things, especially when you're done eating the whole rolls and can eat all the little bits with a spoon.

Anyway, not to add more semantic confusion to the thread. Now back to our regularly scheduled discussion on egg vs. spring rolls...

[Gary Soup]

But on the east coast (of America) egg rolls and spring rolls appear on the same menus. Spring rolls have the thin crispy skin (as in Gary Soup's picture), while egg rolls have a chewier, crunchy, skin with that bubbly texture on the outside.

I don't recall seeing that out here, but it makes a certain amount of sense, if you want to serve two masters. If you make that distinction, I'd say that "egg rolls" are definitely more American than Chinese.

[origamicrane]

the genesis of egg roll

"In the beginning there were spring rolls and we saw that they were good.

Then one day the spring roll wrapper split and the filling came out and we saw that it was bad.

As the wrapper had split and it was bad we covered the tear in batter and fried them. As the filling didn't come out during frying we saw that this was good.

As the spring roll was cover in batter it was no longer a spring roll.

The batter was mostly egg and we named the spring roll with the tear covered in egg batter, a egg roll and it was good. "

I think thats probably how the egg roll came about.

I remeber making spring rolls for my takeaway as a kid and always ended up tearing a few of the wrappers so we just took a bit of batter and smothered the tear in it before frying them.

Probably someone did the same with theirs but instead of covering the tear just dropped the whole thing in the batter, and the rest is history.

I think a lot of western pseudo-chinese food started from mistakes like

Crispy aromatic duck.

[Laksa]

Aren't there also those sweet biscuit things you get in tins. Look like long, thin cigars. Baked egg-enriched pastry. Thoughts those were egg rolls to

J

I've seen those referred to as "love letters" also.

[Ben Hong]

Egg rolls are the staple on the east coast of Canada and, I presume, the US too. The skin is a larger version of the wonton wrapper, perhaps 4 inches sq. , made with the same egg noodle type pastry. So when the things are deep fried, the wrapper tends to bubble on the surface. The shape is not the same barrel shape as in spring rolls (chuen guen), but their ends are pinched flat and sealed. Typical dipping sauce is "plum" sauce or sriracha or other condiment.

[Laksa]

Americans have their egg rolls, and the Australians have their chiko rolls.

Using this self-modified device, he concocted a mixture of boned mutton, celery, cabbage, barley, rice, carrot and spices. Wrapping the combination in a thick slab of egg-and-flour dough, he then fried the resulting cylinder and hand-painted the ends.

Here's a link to a picture.

Could the spring roll be the most adapted and well-traveled Chinese food?