Popiah (fresh spring roll) is a common folks cuisine found in South East Asia. This is particularly popular in China, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. Popiah is usually made of different vegetables and meat. Different place made it differently. Spring rolls also has the fresh version or fried version.
At home, when I want to have a quick healthy meal filled with loads of vegetables, I usually will just prepare spring rolls for my family. I used to use popiah skins bought from NTUC fairprice. But I realised that there is no way my family can finished 40 – 50 pieces of skins in one go. So we will store them in the fridge. But the skin will harden quite fast and be difficult to use again. So I started exploring other types of “popiah skins” until I came across the Vietnamese Rice Paper, I was thrilled. Any unused rice paper, I just need to put them in sealed bags and store them away in my cupboard (no need fridge) and they still taste exactly the same when I need them next time.
Another exciting thing about making popiah is – as long as I have turnip (the main ingredient), the rest of the ingredients I will usually mix and match, depending on what I have at home. So I don’t have to pull out my hairs wondering what else to put in. Below is quite a simple list of ingredients that I usually use in my popiah meal.
This is the Vietnamese Rice Paper.
The Turnip cuts into long strips.
the turnip being fried. Next is the chicken strips and sausage strips.
The folding of the popiah.
Chinese Popiah Recipe
Preparation time: 1 hour.
Ingredients
1 large Turnip (cut into long thin strips)
1 large piece of chicken breast meat
2 Taiwanese Sausages (boiled)
Large handful of bean sprouts
1 whole lettuce
Sweet Sauce
Chilli Sauce
Crushed Roasted Peanut (no-sugar)
Fried Shallots
1 packet of Vietnamese Rice Paper
Cooking Oil
Salt
Pepper
Dark Soya Sauce
Method
- Boil a pot of water, put in Taiwanese Sausages and Chicken Breast Meat. Once each is cooked, just take out. For the Sausage, cut into long stripes. For the Chicken Breast meat, once it cooled down, shred it into long stripes.
- For the whole lettuce, take out the whole leaves and immerse in cold water to wash away the soil. Set aside.
- Heat up the wok, put in 1 tbsp of cooking oil and dry the bean sprouts. Occasionally stir the bean sprouts. Once it is cooked, take out and set aside.
- In the same wok, put in 1-2 tbsp of cooking oil, throw in the long strips of cut Turnip and cook. Occasionally stir the turnip. Once the turnip turned soft, add in 1-2 tbsp dark soya sauce to give it some color. Add in Salt and Pepper (adjust to your preferred level) for taste.
- In a large bowl, pour in semi-hot water. Take out one piece of Vietnamese Rice Paper, dip the rice paper into the semi-hot water and make sure the whole paper is wet, then quickly take out and lay on a large plate.
- First spread 1 tsp of sweet dark sauce on the rice paper (you can add in chilli sauce – optional), put a lettuce leave (squeeze out water) on top, then put in this sequence in the lettuce leave: turnip, bean sprouts, chicken meat, sausage. Sprinkle the top with crushed peanut and fried shallots.
- Roll the spring roll – bottom fold up, then fold the left and right side inwards, then roll upwards until it formed a nice roll.
- Cut the spring roll into approx. 4 -5 pieces and eat. Enjoy while hot!