After the cold winter, the temperature rises in the spring, everything begins to grow, and all plants give out bright green shoots. The tradition of the Beginning of Spring solar term in northern China is to eat spring cakes or spring rolls wrapped in vegetables, which means “bite the spring”. Usually vegetables include bean sprouts, leeks, radishes, and so on. Today‘s recipe I want to share is the vegetarian spring rolls to cater to the need of our body in spring.
Like spring cakes, spring rolls fillings can be a variety of ingredients that are red bean paste, pork chopped, or greens vegetabels, as long as you like them. The custom of “bite the spring” mainly emphasizes the action of biting, even if the bite is only a radish. I chose leeks, carrots, and bean sprouts, all of which are suitable for spring.
According to Chinese medicine, leeks are warm in nature and have the effect of nourishing the kidney and rising yang. There is also a Chinese saying “January spring scallions, February leeks”. “February leeks” means that the leeks grown in the second month of the lunar calendar are the most delicious of the year. Chinese medicine also teaches that liver qi can rise in spring, and grwing bean sprouts are also the most suitable ingredient for liver qi. I think the traditional Chinese food culture is precious to tell people how to conform to nature and what to do to make their bodies healthier.It’s just that modern people are too busy to care about traditions.
For me, spring rolls can be staple food, snack, dessert, congee‘s partner. Just store a box of spring roll wrappers in the refrigerator, when you want to eat it, put some fillings on it and fry it in the pan, the nice food is ready. The point is that this recipe is vegan, the guys who like to be vegetarian don’t miss it.
How to prepare the fillings
Stir-frying the vegetables is necessary step beofre before wrapping the spring rolls. As we known the spring rolls wrappers are too thin, only serveral seconds for deep-frying until brown, so to get cooked through spring rolls we did it.
Where to get spring rolls wrappers
I bought the spring rolls wrappers online to save time. You will also pick it easily on amazon.
Serve with sauce
It is ok for you to serve with ketchup, black pepper sauce, sweet sour sauce or any sauce you love. I did eat them without sauce today, because I only want to get the raw taste of the vegetables and spring . :)
Vegetarian Spring Rolls
Equipment
- Pot for deep-frrying
Ingredients
- 120 gram mung bean sprouts, wash and remove both ends
- 35 gram shiitake mushrooms, soaked in water, then shredded
- 120 gram carrot, peeled, shredded
- 80 gram leek, cut into sections about 3-5 cm length
- 45 gram fungus, soaked in water then shredded
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 tablespoon oil for stir-frying vegetables
- One box of spring rolls wrappers about 200 gram, 25 pieces
- 2 cups oil for deep-frying
Instructions
- Add 1 tablespoon, 1 teaspoon salt, stir-frying the leek, bean sprouts, shiitake mushroom, carrot shredded, black fungus shredded for 2 minutes, transfer to a dish
- Add vegetables stir-fried to every piece wrapper, make spring rolls
- Heat oil over medium-low heat
- Deep frying the spring rolls until cooked through
