Shrimp etouffee egg rolls.
A Cajun influenced appetizer or party food that freezes well.
Sorry to do this all in grams, fellow Americans. Now that I’ve realized how great weighing everything with a digital scale is, it’s a hard habit to kick. I’ve put the closest round-numbered conventional measurements at the end.
Ingredients (Makes 20 egg rolls)
* 20 egg roll wrappers, premade
* 450 grams peeled, deveined fresh shrimp (about 1 pound)
* 250g precooked rice, long grain or jasmine (about a cup)
* 150g shredded napa cabbage (about ¾ cups)
* 200g canned diced tomatoes (8oz)
* 100g finely chopped yellow onion (about 1 medium sized onion)
* 100g chopped green bell pepper (about 1 medium sized bell pepper)
* 50g green onions, finely sliced (about 3 inches of one bunch, measured from the stem towards the green)
* 40g finely chopped jalapeno (about one large-ish jalapeno)
* 10g chopped ginger (about 2 teaspoons)
* 10g chopped garlic (about 3 medium-sized cloves)
* 15g chopped cilantro (about half of a bunch from the store, stems and leaves)
* 40 grams vegetable oil (about 2.5 tablespoons)
* 40 grams all purpose flour (about 2.5 tablespoons)
Filling Prep
Prep and measure yellow onion, bell pepper, green onion, jalapeno, ginger, garlic and cilantro. Let a large skillet preheat to medium-low on the stove while you chop.
Add vegetable oil and flour to skillet, stirring slowly. Butter is acceptable and common as well, especially as this does not call for a dark roux.
Once the roux has come together and darkened just a pinch, add all onions, all peppers, ginger, garlic and a good pinch of salt. Stir regularly and let vegetables sweat for about 5 minutes.
Add canned tomatoes and 250g (¾ cups) water and stir. Let simmer until tomatoes have softened and incorporated into the gravy, at least 10 minutes. This is etouffee now. One can add shrimp, chicken or crawfish and eat as-is with rice. Very good.
Incorporate chopped cabbage, cilantro, and rice. Let simmer for a2-3 minutes until cabbage has softened a bit.
Turn off heat and let contents of pan come to room temperature. This can sit overnight in a bowl in the fridge or can be spread out on a sheet pan and placed in the freezer for 15-20 minutes.
Finely mince one pound defrosted, peeled and deveined shrimp. I recommend a really heavy butcher’s knife or cleaver. Sprinkle over shrimp mince a generous few teaspoons of Cajun seasoning, or equal parts garlic powder, onion powder, white pepper, and cayenne then twice as much salt and paprika. Precooked shrimp will work for this recipe too- I didn’t have any issue with the filling not being cooked through, but if it’s just a preference it won’t affect taste that much.
Once filling has chilled, mix together with minced shrimp. Can be covered and refrigerated overnight or packed into egg rolls right away.
Egg Roll Prep
Prepare an egg roll making station with wrappers, a small bowl of water for whetting the edges, and food safe gloves to avoid sticky hands. Instructions and portions on egg roll wrappers supersede mine. This gets much easier to do with a second or even third set of hands to help break the labor down into stages.
Measure 70-75 grams (about 5 tablespoons) diagonally onto egg roll wrapper. Form into long tube.
Wet corners of egg roll wrapper with finger. Starting with the bottom corner by lifting over the egg roll and tucking against filling.
Pull in left then right corners, pulling tightly.
Roll upwards until egg roll is formed. Wet and pinch loose edges, shaping as necessary. Finished egg rolls can be cooked right away or placed in a ziploc bag and frozen. Frozen egg rolls can be put directly into fryer, but cooking times may need to be adjusted.
Frying:
For deep fryers: Fry in three inches vegetable or peanut oil at 350-375 degrees for 4-5 minutes, turning over in oil as necessary to prevent one side from getting much darker than the other. Depending on the size of the pan, fry only as many at a time as possible without drastically lowering the temperature of the oil.
For air fryers: With the caveat that temperatures are a little less reliable across models, brush egg rolls with vegetable oil all over for best results. Then air fry for 10 minutes on each side, for a total of 20 minutes total, at 350 degrees. Dry on a paper towel. Don’t crowd the egg rolls- depending on the size of your air fryer, batches of 2-4 will likely work best.
Shrimp internal temperature should reach 145 degrees Fahrenheit. Food safety is important! (I eyeballed it and lived to tell the tale.)
Notes:
Can you guess which two of the six egg rolls above are air fried? There is a difference, and a trained eye will figure it out pretty quickly, but it’s closer than I expected.
I think brushing with oil all over does get the best results in the air fryer, but as an experiment I did a roll with no oil at all (left) and one with some low fat olive oil spray (right). Results not unimpressive. On the whole, I do think the deep fried rolls still tasted better- though not by much, the filling packs most of the punch here.
The wrappers I found at the store happened to be vegan, which made me think this would adapt relatively well with tofu or vegan shrimp. Let me know if you try with the latter, I’m curious how those products are.
If three cloves of garlic doesn’t feel like a lot, have you considered that maybe it’s time we stopped saying we can “never have too much garlic”?
Someone pointed out on Twitter that this was a very appropriate post for lent. I promise all readers I am not clever enough to plan these things.
I’ll go ahead and plug my mom’s crawfish etouffee recipe as the one to work from if looking to make the dish more traditionally. I’m taking some liberties with mine, mostly for convenience - real Cajuns, please don’t yell at me. Egg roll pros, please feel free to tell me where I could have improved - I am far from an expert!
Top left and top right are the air fried ones, btw. Thanks for reading!