Thanksgiving Week: Lumpia

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Holidays are not complete for me without lumpia, otherwise known as eggrolls. I can remember running into the kitchen at the first scent of frying oil and waiting impatiently for the first batch to come out. Usually I would burn my tongue but that wouldn’t stop me from inhaling half a dozen of them in my first go. My mom would always yell that there wouldn’t be any more left for our guests. Eventually, she relented and in subsequent years just made more.

Lumpia (along with pancit) is comfort food to me. We had them at every family celebration and this Thanksgiving would be no different since we would be making them ourselves. An exciting part of this process was making the eggrolls with Clare. She had only ever eaten them before and this was her maiden voyage into lumpia making. This year we get two cracks at making lumpia this year because Clare’s family requested it for our Thanksgiving dinner in Atlanta.


Now there are a lot of different ways to make lumpia, probably one for each family out there. In general though, there are two general types: fresh or fried. In the fresh category you have spring rolls, the healthiest of the bunch and the one I like the least. This usually consists of a filling of either fresh or stir-fried veggies (sometimes with meat, sometimes without) wrapped up but not fried. While tasty, this falls into the same category as oven-baked “fried chicken.” It’s just not the same. For me, the truest eggroll is the deep-fried, meat-filled version that my Mom always made.

Growing up I had helped my Mom with the lumpia all the time, usually with the wrapping of the little guys. Unfortunately, that didn’t help me when it came time to mix up a batch of my own, since I couldn’t remember what went into it. Asking my Mom for the recipe was interesting, since like most Moms, she had stopped measuring ingredients for her dishes a long time ago. When she e-mailed me the recipe this is what I got:

You know I don’t measure for this, so here is what goes into it. Cook a little bit of the filling in a pan before you start filling the wrappers and just keep mixing until it tastes right.

Meatloaf mix (50-50 beef and pork)
Carrot, chopped
Celery, chopped
Green onion, chopped
Water chestnuts, chopped
Salt and pepper to taste

Deep fry until the filling is cooked and the wrapper is golden brown.

That’s it. That’s the whole recipe. It’s deceptively simple and it would be easy to over think it. What’s the ratio of meat to veg? How hot should the oil be? Shouldn’t there be more seasoning, something mysteriously Asian? This was instinctual cooking at its most basic: just mix it until it tastes right. All too often I get wrapped up in the details of the process and lose sight of the final goal, creating a delicious meal for my friends and family. Well, there was no losing sight this time because the sparseness of the instructions allowed me to focus on my memories of how the dish should taste so that it was “just right.”

The Wrapper

Ok, so I kind of cheated here. I was out at my parents’ house earlier in the week and raided their freezer for eggroll wrappers. It’s just one of those things that my Mom always has in her freezer. She had two different kinds, but one stood out as the clear choice for any future lumpia-making. The TYJ wrappers were thin, pliable and didn’t dry out easily. I prefer the thinner wrappers because they will cook uniformly inside and out. Thicker wrappers will crisp up on the outside but be a bit chewier on the inside. The last characteristic is important because as wrappers dry-out they become increasingly difficult to work with. They begin to crack or won’t seal against itself, causing the final product to unravel when it gets into the frying oil.

The Filling

The filling is almost like a meatloaf, minus the binding materials (i.e. breadcrumbs or an egg). My Mom prefers to prep all the veg with a knife, as the food processor or grater tend to get things too small and watery. We found a way around this by chopping the veg into smaller pieces before it went into the food processor. The final product was close to a medium to medium-large mince.

When putting together the mixture, I was looking to balance a few things. The first was texture, as the meat would bring a nice chewiness to each bite, while the vegetables and wrapper would bring a crunch. Second, the savory of the meat would need to balance against the sweetness of the carrots.

Rolling

My Mom has a few different ways of rolling, but however you choose to do it, here are a few things to keep in mind:

1. Try to make the amount of filling you put in uniform between sheets. This will make cooking easier.
2. Don’t over fill the wrapper. Again, you’re looking for a balance between crunchiness and chewiness.
3. Minimize your air bubbles. This will help prevent the egg rolls from opening up in the oil.

Frying

This is something that I would actually like to codify a bit, mostly because cooking at too high a temperature will break down the oil and I would like to be able to use it for more than one session.  As it was, my Mom's suggestion was to use the electric wok and set it to SEAR.  It worked out, but I don't know how good the oil will be for another batch.

When frying the lumpia you need to make sure that the oil is hot enough to cook the meat and brown the eggroll wrappers within the same amount of time.  If the oil is too hot, you will end up burning the wrapper by the time the meat has cooked through completely.  Keeping the eggrolls the same size will also help when frying, because everything will be able to come out at the same time.

The one suggestion I have when frying is to keep the eggrolls in as long as the oil is bubbling.  It will do so vigorously at first, but will slow after a while.  You want to pull them out before they stop bubbling because once that happens there isn't enough moisture left to push the oil out of the food, keeping the eggrolls from becoming oily.

These days, I'm on the other side of the wok.  Everyone seems to love the lumpia as much as I did growing up.  Now if I can only get them out fast enough.