What is an Egg Roll?

@StarJo – The first egg roll I ever ate was from a Japanese restaurant. The fillings may differ slightly, but it's true that both Japanese and Chinese places offer egg rolls.

I have noticed that Japanese restaurants tend to offer more spring rolls as part of a meal than regular egg rolls. Many lunch bento box deals come with fried rice, some sort of meat in teriyaki sauce, and spring rolls, along with a few pieces of sushi.

I like the light taste of the spring rolls. The are smaller and much easier to chew, and they tend to be a bit crispier, too. I love dipping them in the sweet plum sauce that comes in the middle section of the lunch box.

Egg rolls are one item that I always pick up when I visit a Chinese buffet. They have so many unique fillings that I just don't see in many other foods. For example, I love bean sprouts, and egg rolls are just full of them.

Are egg rolls primarily a Chinese food? Do Japanese restaurants ever serve egg rolls?

@Perdido – All egg rolls are different, but I can give you the calorie count on the boxes of frozen egg rolls I have in my freezer. I have some good chicken egg rolls that contain about 230 calories each, while the vegetable version contains 190.

I will say that the chicken egg rolls are more filling. They only contain 40 calories more than the other kind, but if you eat two of them, you basically have your lunch right there. Alternately, if you don't want to consume that many calories at lunch, you could just eat one chicken egg roll along with some fruit or yogurt to fill you up.

Is the egg roll calorie count high? How much of a difference is there between an egg roll made with meat like chicken and one made of vegetables only?

I'm trying to decide whether or not I can afford to include egg rolls in my diet. I love the flavor, but I would imagine they have to have a lot of calories.

Egg roll wrappers are such a multi-purpose food. You can make egg rolls and spring rolls with them. You can also make various pastries and sweets. It's good to keep a couple of packages in the freezer. That's what I do and if I have guests come over suddenly, I can always make something with the wrappers.

@fify-- I guess you could try baking them at home but I don't think they will be as good. It's the frying that gives egg rolls its crispiness. So I'm suspecting that in the oven, egg rolls will become too hard and not crispy.

You can make egg rolls healthier by frying them in less oil and using olive oil instead of vegetable oil. You can also set the egg rolls on paper towels to absorb some of the excess oil before eating. These should help.

I wonder if there is a healthier version of egg rolls? Maybe baked egg rolls? Is that possible?

While egg roll recipes can be simple, I don't know if I agree that they can be taken on by very beginners, like this article suggests. For starters, someone wanting to make authentic egg rolls should be willing to either hunt down ingredients, like the dough used to wrap the rolls, or to take on making it themselves, as well as the ingredients that go inside. Also, different Asian cultures have different recipe traditions, and they are often very unlike what most people in the United States think of as egg rolls. I would recommend a beginner either try to find a very simple recipe, or get help from a friend who has made them before.

While it is relatively easy to make vegetarian egg rolls, I've found that many traditionalists plain refuse to do so. I once took a class in college with a group of Hmong people, and was invited to join them making their own version of egg rolls. It took a fair amount of begging to get them to grudgingly make some without the pork and chicken mixture. The end result was quite delicious, though, and probably would not be that hard to replicate.