About this recipe
Thin, finger-sized pork rolls in a wheat wrapper, deep-fried until hard and blistered and cut into short lengths for eating with the fingers. They are deliberately slender — a fat lumpia is the wrong shape — and the wrapper is the thin wheat kind, which fries to a dry, brittle shell. Lumpiang Shanghai is not lumpiang sariwa, the fresh unfried roll in a soft crepe wrapper served under a thick garlic-peanut sauce, and it is not a Vietnamese fresh spring roll in translucent rice paper. It appears at almost every Filipino party.
Recipe facts
- Yield
- About 40 pieces, serving 8-10 as part of a spread
- Prep
- 45 minutes
- Cook
- 25 minutes
- Total
- 70 minutes
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Spice
- Mild
Allergens Contains wheat, egg and soy. Not gluten-free.
Development draft. This is an untested development recipe from the cookbook project. It has not been kitchen-tested, and the quantities and timings are the author’s working draft rather than a verified result.
Ingredients
The filling
- 1 1/4 lb (570 g) ground pork, not too lean
- 1 medium carrot, grated fine
- 1 small onion, chopped very fine
- 4 cloves garlic, minced
- 3 scallions, sliced thin
- 1 large egg
- 2 tbsp (30 ml) soy sauce
- 1 tsp (6 g) salt
- 1 tsp (2 g) ground black pepper
- 1/2 cup (60 g) water chestnuts or jicama, chopped fine (optional, for crunch)
To assemble and fry
- 40 lumpia wrappers, thin wheat type, about 8 in (20 cm) square, thawed if frozen
- 1 large egg, beaten, for sealing
- 4 cups (950 ml) neutral oil, for deep frying
To serve
- Sweet-and-sour dipping sauce, or Filipino banana ketchup
- 1 tbsp (15 ml) cane vinegar with 2 crushed garlic cloves, as an alternative dip
Equipment
- Large mixing bowl
- Deep heavy pan or wok for frying, at least 3 in (7.5 cm) deep
- Thermometer or a wooden chopstick for testing the oil
- Wire rack set over a tray
- Small bowl of water for sealing
Method
- Mix the ground pork, grated carrot, onion, garlic, scallions, the 1 egg, soy sauce, salt, pepper and the water chestnuts if using in the bowl. Work it with your hands about 1 minute, until it is evenly combined and slightly tacky.
- Fry a teaspoon of the mixture in a little oil, taste it, and adjust the salt and pepper. The raw mixture cannot be tasted safely.
- Peel off one wrapper and lay it as a diamond in front of you. Place 1 tbsp of filling in a thin line across the lower third, leaving 1 in (2.5 cm) clear at each end.
- Fold the bottom corner up over the filling, fold both sides inward, then roll upward tightly into a thin cylinder about 3/4 in (2 cm) thick. Brush the final corner with beaten egg and press to seal.
- Repeat with the remaining wrappers and filling, keeping the finished rolls under a cloth. Rolled tightly with no air pockets is what keeps them from bursting.
- Heat the oil in the deep pan to 340°F (170°C). A wooden chopstick dipped in should throw off a steady stream of small bubbles.
- Fry in batches of 6-8, never crowding the pan, 5-6 minutes per batch, turning once, until deep golden and hard. The oil temperature will drop when the rolls go in; keep it near 340°F.
- Lift onto the wire rack — not onto paper towel, which traps steam and softens the underside. Let the oil come back up to temperature between batches.
- Cut each roll into two or three short lengths on the diagonal, or leave whole.
- Serve hot with sweet-and-sour sauce or banana ketchup, and with the garlic vinegar for anyone who prefers a sharp dip.
From the foundations
The book pairs this recipe with the following, from the sauces, sambals and pastes that open the collection.
The Complete Edition
Lumpiang Shanghai sits in the Philippines chapter
The book carries this recipe in full alongside the rest of the Philippines chapter, the pastes and dips it is built on, and the twenty-seven pantry studies that open the collection.
In review with Amazon KDP
Both editions have been submitted to Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing and are currently in review. Submitted prices are $9.99 for the kindle edition and $49.99 for the paperback. Neither is on sale yet, and prices are as submitted rather than final.