Bland egg rolls--help?

Made egg rolls last night. They looked great and were chocked full of the requisite veggies (bean sprouts, cabbage, carrot, onion) as well as ground pork. I added sesame oil and minced garlic to the pork while sauteeing, and seasoned everything with soy sauce and salt and pepper. I also added two tablespoons of peanut butter, since I love that spin on it. I yielded about 15 eggrolls which were deep fried in peanut oil. It just was like they were just..there. Everyone else seemed to enjoy them and the improvised wonton soup (using frozen pork and leek dumplings)--so much so that I never got around to making the turkey chop suey I had planned (which kind of skeered me anyway, using leftover turkey. It could be good or it could be really uh, leftover-y.)

All of the online recipes I found seemed to have very basic seasoning. Am I missing something, though?

Maybe some oyster sauce in the filling? It seems to me too much peanut butter(which I'm not necessarily a fan of anyway) would bland things out, too.

More ginger and garlic? Perhaps sub out some of the cabbage and/or onion for leeks? Sliced dried soaked shiitakes?

minced ginger
minced garlic
black pepper
onion powder
garlic powder
touch of sugar

.... these are staples in my eggroll recipes

Jersette,

Saute the pork with with garlic, ginger, which you do not mention, minced hot pepper and little white pepper. Thin the two (level) tablespoons of peanut butter with the (toasted) sesame oil and soy and make sure the egg roll wrappers are not overly thick. Thick doughy wrappers can over power the other ingredients.

Enjoy,
Gary

The problem was the bean sprouts. They don't add much flavor at all and they're full of water that dilutes the flavor of the other ingredients. One of the other essential ingredients of the peanut butter egg roll is rendered chicken skin - saute the skin until golden, then grind or chop. Use the rendered fat to saute your other ingredients.

Thanks, everyone, for the help!

No, there was no ginger in these egg rolls..probably because I'm not a fan. I've had some dishes where it overpowered the other flavors so I tend to back away from it, but I'll definitely add some next time. The mixing of the peanut butter with the other liquid ingredients is a great tip as well.

As for the chicken skin...hmmm. I did have a lot of turkey skin leftover. That would have worked,darn it!

Louisa Chu wrote:One of the other essential ingredients of the peanut butter egg roll is rendered chicken skin - saute the skin until golden, then grind or chop. Use the rendered fat to saute your other ingredients.

Wow, maybe even wow², this sounds terrific!

Egg roll party at Louisa's house!!

Hi,

Buried deep in another thread is a recipe from Antoinette and Francois Pope on (Americanized) eggrolls circa 1950's.

My friend Helen makes eggrolls on a very regular basis. I have sent her a link to this post for her response. Her eggrolls are more Asian influenced than American, she has pork (sometimes chicken depending on the audience), bean sprouts, black mushrooms and whatever else. They are not as densely filled as the restaurant type. In fact, people eat them as-is without any thought of sweet sauce or mustard dips. She will used garlic infused vinegar, which is an influence of her Filipino background.

Helen's kids are completing high school this year. She has brought eggrolls and wonton's to school and community events for years. When she attends events, kids come up inquiring if she brought eggrolls. She once offered to carpool, one kid got very excited because he would have first access to her eggrolls. While Helen has made a lot of eggrolls over the years, they are not in the glove compartment box!

Regards,

Louisa Chu wrote:One of the other essential ingredients of the peanut butter egg roll is rendered chicken skin - saute the skin until golden, then grind or chop. Use the rendered fat to saute your other ingredients.

How do you manage to get the ingredients inside the wrapper, then?
(In my house, skin starts coming off the chicken before it hits the plates, often leaving us with a horror-show style neatly flayed whole chicken - each family member is equally culpable)

I'm making egg rolls today with ground pork, minced ginger, minced garlic, sesame oil, oyster sauce, salt, pepper, shredded green and red cabbage, shredded carrot, and peanut butter. Naturally, before I started, I looked through every LTH thread related to egg rolls, in addition to other googled recipe results, for ideas.

In the past I've made egg rolls using those 99-cent packs of shredded cabbage, Dole brand or whatever, labeled for cole slaw, but a couple of days ago at the Jewels ( ) in Mundelein, I saw they were selling mixes of shredded red and green cabbage and carrots tightly packed in clamshells, just over a pound for 99 cents. Somewhat coarser texture to the shred than the bagged stuff, and I liked the idea of the extra texture and color of the carrots and red cabbage. I was just a little worried that the enterprising Jewel staff might have shredded some somewhat-past-its-prime cabbage that would have a strong smell, but upon opening the container a few days later, I found it to be very fresh, high-quality product. What's the catch? Jewel must be expecting a big coleslaw weekend coming up.

I'd had making egg rolls on my mind for a while, so I bought the shredded mix and egg roll wrappers and ground up a couple of pork chops with the Kitchen-Aid.

Filling is cooling now. I'm looking forward to having a few egg rolls tonight and a supply of egg rolls in the freezer. On that note, I learned---from experience and subsequently from an LTH thread, I think---not to use bean sprouts if you plan to freeze the egg rolls. Or just plain not to use bean sprouts.

Dang, wish I'd had some chicken skin on hand. But I probably would have just eaten it all before it got into the mix.

All I can say about avoiding ending up with a bland end product is making sure the filling is tasty before you start rolling it in the wrappers. So far so good.