Gluten Free Chinese Spring Rolls

Gluten Free Chinese Spring Rolls with Rice Paper wrappers

We made these the other night for dinner and I asked my husband, Tim to write a guest post for me since he cooked the filling and fried them up.  You may have noticed I love to bake but I actually struggle with cooking, the whole seasoning thing drives me wild, I just get frustrated with that kind of creativity.  Tim is great with seasoning things and tweaking so that the meals taste amazing.  We worked together to make these, I cut the stuff because Tim is down right dangerous with a knife, and when he rolled the spring rolls they came out looking like, well, poos.  I stepped in and helped roll, and they came out a lot better, of course.  Here is what Tim has to say about our experience.


I'm of Chinese descent. (Not sure if you knew that.) Being raised on authentic Chinese food, it's a requirement to know how to make authentic Chinese food at home. Quite simply, it's not always that practical to dine at an authentic Chinese restaurant for every meal. But there's also a lot of dishes that are extremely difficult to make at home. When I married Andrea, I saw that she couldn't enjoy a lot of my favorites, because they were glutinous. And not just glutinous rice, which is a misnomer, but actually contain gluten. One particular dish is the authentic Chinese spring roll. So, for the years I have known Andrea, she's never really been able to enjoy a crisp spring roll shell, with crunchy vegetable, and tender, juicy pork inside. This guest blog post will discuss something that falls into all the categories: authentic Chinese, hard to make at home, and usually glutinous.

One day, Andrea saw these rice roll wrappers in the store, and so I just had to use them to make spring rolls.

Gluten Free Rice Wrappers

So here's what I did. I marinated pork tenderloin in mushroom infused dark soy sauce and rice wine. I cut them into thin shreds (by "I", I actually mean "Andrea", who has much better knife skills than I). I then heated up two tablespoons of canola oil in a non-stick pan, and put in a teaspoon of garlic powder. (I didn't want to use fresh or minced, because the chunks would be too big.) I stir-fried the pork, tossed in some chopped scallions, and after cooking them through, transferred it to a separate plate.

Then, I sliced mushrooms, and sauteed them in canola oil, kosher salt, and white pepper, and removed them to another plate.

Then, I sauteed bean sprouts in canola oil, until slightly warm, threw in the cabbage, and then tossed it slightly, so it was still crunchy. I then added the pork and the mushrooms, and stir-fried them all together.

I then dipped the rice wrappers into water, just enough to make it pliable, put in about a teaspoon of the mixture, and rolled it up. (Again, "I" as in "Andrea".)


















I contemporaneously heated up oil in another pan, until it was very hot, and then shallow fried the rolls. Unlike the wheat wrappers, the rice wrappers don't brown up as much, but the crispiness was there!

Gluten Free Scallion Pancakes

Homemade Gluten Free Scallion Pancakes

Apparently I inspired my husband with my cooking the other night because he sat down and wrote a guest post for me.  Isn't he the cutest?!?!  I guess he liked the pancakes.




From Tim:


I am of Chinese descent, despite living in New York my whole life. That being said, I grew up with family members who knew how to cook authentic Chinese, in multiple styles. Most notably, my grandmother would make dumplings from scratch.

When neither she nor my mother was cooking, we'd enjoy going to get dim sum, a tradition we adopted now, with Andrea and Ceci. The problem is, some of the best morsels are gluten filled.  Aside from shrimp dumplings and roast pork buns, one of my favorites is the scallion pancake.

I'm not sure what motivated Andrea, but she suggested making them from scratch. We located a whole host of recipes online, which seemed simple in ingredient list, but somewhat complex.

She came up with an amazingly simple method, and so, I picked up some scallions. She basically used GF Bisquick, but with hot water, and made a batter mixing in some salt, white pepper, and of course, diced scallions. Mixed it all together until well blended.

She heated a thin layer of canola oil on high, and pan-fried the pancakes, flipping once. And that was it. Not entirely authentic, but damn good flavor. The texture of the authentic is more like phyllo dough, but I think that that is much more difficult to pull off as gluten free, and much more time consuming.


Gluten Free Scallion Pancake Recipe


1   Cup GF Bisquick
1   Cup Water (instead of milk)
2   Tbs Vegetable Oil
1   Egg
1   Bunch of Scallions, finely slice the green parts only
Salt and White Pepper  (dash of each)




Blend all ingredients in a medium mixing bowl until smooth
Pour a few Tablespoons of vegetable oil into a pan and heat on stove, when oil is Really hot, carefully pour in about a 1/4 cup of pancake mix and let it fry up.  Flip and cook second side until golden brown.