Fried rolls

So… this weekend’s cooking experiments saw me invading the kitchen of my in-laws and making chả giò (fried rolls). It’s actually a lot more fun to have victims, er, helping hands I mean, to take on some of the work involved in making the rolls. Making the stuffing and wrapping the rolls is about 90% of the work, and for me alone it’s usually a good half-day’s work. Here we made short work of the 30+ rolls in under 2 hours; I understand now why making this (and making dumplings) is a communal activity!

We also got to try out my in-laws’ Philips Airfryer, which deep-fries food with a minimal amount of oil: in this case, the H kindly brushed all the rolls with frying oil (which was some work :p), and we then studied the problem of how to adapt the recipe to an Airfryer. First attempt was dumping rolls in the Airfryer basket and cooking them at 200°C for 20 minutes, flipping them once during cooking. This proved effective but time-consuming: the basket could only take 6 or so rolls, and 20 minutes is a long time when you’re already hungry. We then switched to an intermediate method: cook the rolls in a 200°C-oven for 20 minutes, until they just start to turn golden. Then dump them 6 by 6 in the Airfryer basket, and cook them at 200°C for 4 minutes on each side. Much, much more effective.

The final result doesn’t *quite* look like it’s been deep-fried, but I have to say it’s not too shabby, and the rolls tasted great!

(also, the H now wants us to do dumplings in the Airfryer. I think he enjoyed the entire thing a bit too much :p)