This recipe can also be made as a non-vegetarian meal with chicken or prawns.
What you need:
Filling (Any combination of the list below):
- Lettuce
- Cucumber
- Carrot
- Avocado
- Bean Sprouts
- Mint leaves
- Kelp noodles
- Rice paper
Dipping Sauce
- Sweet chili sauce
- Tamari
- Soy sauce (fermented)
What to do:
Prepare your ingredients for the rolls, eg. Finely slice the lettuce, peel and grate the carrots, wash the bean sprouts etc.
Place the kelp noodles in a bowl of water. Break them apart as best you can. I grab the whole lot and chop it through the middle, twice. So the noodles aren’t so long and more easily handled.
Pour a small amount of luke warm water on a dinner plate and place a clean tea towel beside. Quickly but carefully place a sheet of rice paper in the water, covering completely. Then remove immediately and place on the tea towel.
*When I started making cold rolls I used to wet one piece of rice paper completely. Put it on the tea towel, then put the next one in the water while I was filling the first one. This doesn’t work! The paper rips easily and is not so elastic. Thanks to my friend Alice and her tips at a yummy Vietnamese restaurant when we were in LA in early 2014. After that night, I feel like an expert.
The order of your ingredients doesn’t really matter but I like aesthetically pleasing food so I always place the noodles down first, then the lettuce, other salad ingredients, (meat if I’m using it,) then mint leaves. Roll as per the instructions on the rice paper packet: Roll half way, fold the sides in, and then keep rolling. The rice paper will be a little sticky which is good, because it holds your rolls together in the end.
Serve with your choice of dipping sauce. My favourite is Braggs Coconut Aminos or Tamari (traditionally fermented, gluten free, soy sauce).
