My father and I were craving some fresh and healthy food, and since we are a fan of shrimp and Vietnamese cuisine, spring rolls were the obvious choice! I used this recipe on foodnetwork.com because it looked simple and easy, it was:

Shrimp Spring Rolls with Peanut Dipping Sauce Recipe

You can click the link above for details – I don’t want to plagiarise. However, I will share some secrets I learned while making them! Read this guide before you get started:

• Buying ingredients at your local H-mart or asian market will save you money. I wish I’d known this secret years ago, but it’s true… groceries are cheaper at the foreign grocer! If your town has one, I highly recommend stopping in.

• Only soak 2 rice papers at a time in a plate of water. Soak them as you go: when you take one out put a new one in. This will give you enough time to make a spring roll while the new rice paper softens.

• Here is a mistake we made… The directions insisted we combine all the vegetables with the cooked bean thread noodles. – First off, we probably should have “finely shredded” the veggies a little better, and by better I mean we should have actually done it. – Second, the noodles just didn’t combine with the veggies well. One was raw and dry, the other sticky and lumpy, so I don’t know why that’s a good idea? – Anyways,  keep them separate and just grab a small portion of both to place inside the roll. A “good portion” will fit between your thumb and two fingers, no more than that or the roll won’t close.

• To make your spring roll look prettier, roll it like this:
  • First place the filling at the bottom of the wrap, give it one roll.
  • Then lay out the mint leaves, cilantro, and shrimp
  • Wrap the sides in and roll it all the way up.

• This is the best peanut sauce you will ever taste! (Photo is of the ingredients before they were mixed together.) We had to use chunky peanut butter because that’s all we had, so it looked kiiiiiindof lumpy. But the taste was AMAZING. Luckily I had leftovers and I ate it with everything until, sadly, I ran out.  So my tip to you would be to make extra Thai Peanut Sauce and put it on everything. Examples include: apples, celery, PIZZA (seriously, try it), chips, sweet potato fries, spring rolls (duh), …

• Lastly, here’s a serving suggestion. Aren’t they pretty!?

My Dad and I had a good time making them, it was worth the effort. He doesn’t think so, but he thinks all cooking should take 10 minutes or less. That’s how fast it’s done at the restaurant right? (WRONG). Whatever Dad, thanks for your help, I guess. (He secretly loved it).

Good luck on your own folks, I hope this helped! Once again, here’s the recipe from the Food Network. Please leave your thoughts in the comments… do YOU think it was worth it?

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