Or; How to Avoid Disaster when Cooking with Them.
I miss dumplings. And spring rolls. And every other delightful combination of dough stuffed goodness, but the first two are at the top of my list. I am usually fairly philosophical about not being able to eat wheat. It has been a lot of years and I have at least passable substitutes for most things that I miss. Dumplings haven’t been easily replaced though.
When I first heard the idea of using rice paper spring roll wrappers and just filling them myself, I was ecstatic. I spent hours trying new recipes that first time. I made 3-4 different fillings, folded them with different techniques, double wrapped some, steamed some, pan fried others. I was determined to come out of that evening with the perfect technique to keep myself in dumpling heaven when needed. Let me tell you folks, the results of all of that work were dishearteningly mediocre. (Even for a gluten free alternative; which if you know, you KNOW.)
Sticky, gluey, leaky, rubbery… They all sucked, just in different ways. The only redeeming feature was that the fillings were all delicious. We ended up sitting around the dinner table, long after we normally eat, and ripping off all of the outsides of our dumplings to eat the middles! (Thankfully it wasn’t such a disaster that I couldn’t laugh about it!)
It’s been almost two years and I only just dared to attempt it again. This time I was armed with an important piece of new knowledge that none of the previous recipes had mentioned. YOU NEED TO LET THE WRAPPERS DRY OUT BEFORE YOU COOK THE DUMPLINGS. To use rice paper wrappers, you take a dry disk, wet it, let it sit for 30 seconds to soak up the water, then fold it around your spring roll (or dumpling as the case may be). In my first attempts I then cooked them right away and the results were, well, gooey.
I only recently came across a recipe that mentions that you really need to set them aside in the fridge to dry, at the very least, but that making them ahead and freezing them is even better. I tried the later as I was doing a bit of meal prepping already. Let me tell you, it was night and day. So much easier! I am already imagining what it will be like to have a freezer full of frozen dumplings and spring rolls that I can just pull out for a quick dinner. Bliss.
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