Vietnamese Spring Rolls

I love bringing Vietnamese Spring Rolls to a potluck. They are so easy to make, super healthy, and always a huge hit. Here's how I make them.

Ingredients for the Spring Rolls
1 pack of spring roll skins (make sure to buy the rice based ones, not the flour based ones)
1 pack of cellophane noodles (thin)
fresh basil (preferably Thai basil, but normal basil works fine too)
1 lb of cooked shrimp, tails removed


Soak the cellophane noodles in hot water until soft (about 2-3 minutes). Drain the water and cut up the cellophone into ~1-2 inch snippets using scissors.

Fill another large bowl (bigger than the wrappers) with hot water (not quite boiling - you don't want to burn your fingers!). Lay out on a table all the innards of the spring roll - basil, shrimp

I like to double my wrappers. Dip 2 sheets of spring roll skins into the hot water briefly. It really just has to touch the hot water.

Lay the wrapper on a plate and put 3 pieces of shrimp, 2-3 basil leaves, and a small pile of cellophone noodles.

The wet wrapper will stick to itself, so carefully wrap the sides of the roll as shown above.

Roll it up . . .

Tada - that's it. The wrapper is pretty sticky, so it should just stick to itself. Don't worry it it looks a bit wet and soggy at the beginning. It will dry quickly, and then it will look really good! I promise!

Here's the recipe for the peanut dipping sauce. FYI - this recipe is very flexible. Please just use the following measures as a guideline and feel free to modify according to your tastes. For example, if you like it sweeter, add more sugar! If you like it spicy, add Srirachi sauce! If you like it thicker, add more peanut butter! More watery? Add more water! Really - you can also add chopped scallions, chopped basil, etc. Once you have peanut butter, sugar, and soy sauce, you basically have the fundamentals of this sauce.

Peanut Sauce
½ cup peanut butter
1 T soy sauce
½ T Hoisin sauce (optional)
6 T water
2 T sugar

Mix all ingredients together and stir until mixed well. Serve as dipping sauce.