This is our name for Chinese dumpling fillings in Vietnamese spring roll wrappers.
It could be described as a Perfect Health Diet-compatible Asian-style hamburger. Dumpling burgers? Hamburger rolls?
Ingredients
Here are some of the filling ingredients – green onion, shiitake mushroom, 1/2 lb shrimp, ginger, and garlic.
Other filling ingredients include 2 lb ground beef, 2 tsp fish sauce, 2 tsp soy sauce, and a pinch of salt. Traditionally Chinese dumplings contain ground pork, but we favor beef over pork.
You’ll also need spring roll wrappers, and for a dipping sauce rice vinegar and ginger.
Preparing the filling
We minced all filling ingredients except the ground beef and shrimp in a food processor, pureed the shrimp separately, and combined them with the ground beef in an unheated wok. This is 2 lb ground beef, the shrimp, and the other filling ingredients before we mixed them:
This is what they look like after hand mixing:
Preparing the spring roll wrappers
The easiest way to do this is to buy pre-made Vietnamese spring roll wrappers. You can see that the ingredients (tapioca, rice, salt, and water) are Perfect Health Diet-compatible.
The wrappers need only be pre-soaked briefly in warm water, one by one, just before use:
Once a wrapper is moist, soft, and flexible, spread it on a work surface and place some of the filling on it. Then wrap the wrapper around the filling, burrito-style:
Cooking
We recommend steaming the dumpling rolls. We used a wok with a steaming tray on top. To prevent the rolls from sticking to the steaming tray, we placed a bed of shredded cabbage between the steaming tray and the rolls:
Pre-heat the water to a near-boil before placing the steamer tray on top. When ready to cook, cover the wok, bring the water back to a boil, and steam for 10 minutes. When the filling has changed color throughout, they’re done:
Serve them with the now-cooked cabbage, some cucumber slices, and a dipping sauce made from sliced ginger and rice vinegar:
Alternative cooking methods
You can also fry the dumpling rolls, as here:
Conclusion
This is a very flexible dish: you can adjust the filling ingredients and dipping sauce to suit your taste. We quite liked this hamburger-like flavor, but next time we’ll probably use less ground beef and more shrimp. Or maybe we’ll try some cheese, onion, and tomato in the filling for a cheeseburger roll!
via this link:
Perfect timing – I have some of these wrappers sitting in my pantry. I’ll try these for dinner tonight.
Thanks
I love those! We make them regularly in our house usually with a gyoza/mandu style filling. My husband loves to barbecue so he cooks them on the flat plate of our bbq in a little fat. They end up having a very unctuous mouth feel with a slight chewiness.
I might make these for dinner tonight as well! When you fry them, do you mean pan-fried, or deep fried? I’m imagining it would take a long time for the filling to cook through if just pan-fried. Thanks!
Hi Bethany,
They were pan-fried at low heat for about 4 minutes per side. We also covered the wok and a little steam from water released by the filling also helps to cook them.
Thank you, Paul! These are definitely on the the menu for tonight.
Thank you Paul! I was wondering how to use those wrappers.
Paul,
I tried making these last night, though I dont have a steamer at home… so I tried the pan friend with subsequent steam (a la gyoza) as mentioned above. The rolls completely fell apart and I ended up with a gelatiunous, if delicious, mess…
Where did I go wrong?
If you could come up with a PHD version of Baozi and Jiaozi I’d be forever thankful, whenever I’m in China I eat enough for a lifetime 😉 Especially the baozi…
Hi Dave,
I’ll ask Shou-Ching but it may be you soaked the wrappers too long.
Update: Shou-Ching suggests squeezing water out when rolling the dumplings, letting the wrapped rolls dry a bit before putting them in the wok, and pre-heating the oil in the wok before adding the dumpling rolls.
Hi ChenZhen,
We’ll post on those one of these days, we actually made some this weekend. The rice-based dough needs a bit more refinement, but they were very good!
What I do for gyoza style…..
I soak the wrappers for about 20 seconds (counting in my head) and then lay them onto the bottom half of a clean tea towel. I fold the top half of the tea towel over the wrapper and press down briefly to soak up the excess moisture then fill and wrap. I put all the prepared rolls on a piece of slightly dampened paper towel on a plate, lay another piece of damp paper towel over the top of the rolls, cover with plastic wrap and keep in the fridge until ready to cook.
Yeah, that sounds awesome, Paul! 🙂
Paul,
Read the book and am intrigued. Where does soy sauce fit in with the diet? I use Tamari to avoid the gluten and was wondering…soy beans and all. I will try the dumpling rolls. Thanks
Hi Rich,
Soy sauce is OK in moderation, because (a) fermenting helps detoxify it, and (b) soy protein (the toxin source) quantities are small and “the dose makes the poison.”
Best, Paul
Wow, these look great. My Chinese daughter-in-law makes great dumplings using wrappers she buys at an asian grocery store, but the wrappers are made from wheat. I’d really wanted to know if there were alternatives. But I don’t know if these Vietnamese wrappers are the sort of thing I’d be able to find in Jacksonville, FL.
Thanks for the response Paul.
I made several batches….all steam fried under a covered sauce pan. I either used ground grass fed lamb or beef “raw” and mixed them with Bubbies sauerkraut or TJ’s or Mann’s broccoli slaw. Spread a little olive oil on the counter which I rolled the Vietnamese Spring Roll wrappers. available at several chain grocery stores. The raw meat and vegetables were hand mixed in a bowl. I put them in a covered saute pan after sprinkling a little olive oil on them, cooked them on high about 4 minutes, turned them over and cooked another 3……Awesome. I am a fan.
Great, Rich! We should try it with the olive oil and kimchi inside next time.
I am sold.
I made some the other day with ground lamb. They were yummy. Today I took some chicken liver, a lamb heart and about four slices of bacon and ground them together for the meat component. We loved them. We enjoy the taste of organ meats. But for those that don’t, mixing a small amount in with some muscle meat and all the seasonings would be a good way to disguise them.
Thanks for this great idea!!
Hi first time here. Thanks for posting the recipe.
I wish to try using rice paper for the very first time.
I wonder, can I pre-prepared the rolls and serve it to my guest on the next day? Will the skins turned hard?
Thank you so much!
Hi Joanne,
Good question. We haven’t tried it. Shou-Ching thinks they will taste best when freshly made, and will dry out. They might crack or crumble, and then it would be like having the filling with rice.
If you try it, let us know how it turns out!
Hi Paul, thanks for the reply.
I am thinking to put some shredded veges (jicama, carrot and etc) for the filling. So I can imagine the crunch when biting on it, yum yum!
Oh yes, freshly made is always the best. But I know I will be busy on my girl’s birthday, therefore would not have much time for wrapping the rolls.
Anyway, appreciate for your comment.
I will definitely let you know the outcome if I try the “pr-prepared” rolls.
Hi,
I am just working my way through the book and have loved what I have seen so far – though completely against a life time of learning.
I wanted to enquire about fat. I see a lot of these recipes that to me at least, appear quite lean in fat calories such as the one above. Am I missing something here or is it just a leaner meal requiring more fat to be hunted down elsewhere in the day?
One last question…Are tinned tomatoes in or out?
Thanks,
Jamie
Hi Jamie, I kind of see fat as being a part of the tastiness of the meal, but not something I go out of my way to add. For example, for this recipe, beef with 20% fat has a good amount of fat. It’s not that lean, although it doesn’t taste as fatty as say, the fat on a ribeye, it might be mixed in there. If you want more fat, you can fry these in coconut oil, that will also add fat. Somedays I feel like something heavier, somedays I feel like something lighter, and so it depends on your mood, in my opinion. But also, if you look at the perfect health diet, the weight loss version, if you’re looking to cut weight, fat is actually the best place to cut down upon, and you should aim for the best quality fat- from egg yolks, but cut down on butter, oil, etc.
I’m pretty sure tinned tomatoes are ok, I don’t know what paul and shou-ching say about BPA, or other preservatives, but once-in-awhile, why not? I always take the dose makes the poison as my guide.
These were great! I ground scallops instead of shrimp, used portabella mushrooms instead of shiitake, etc. I have started using the idea of a vinegar dipping sauce with a little bit of shredded fresh ginger or fish sauce for most meats I eat now, as I find them a bit bland on their own.
Thanks for the recipe and write-up, Paul and Shou-Ching!