Gluten Free Irish Egg Rolls for St. Patrick's Day

by

Food & Dining

By Alison Rose Munn

I decided to have a little fun with traditional dishes for St. Patrick’s Day this year. I came across the idea of making egg rolls out of corned beef and cabbage and thought that would be a delightful party hand food. So I decided to try to my hand at making a gluten free version. And it took me three tries to get it right. I tried making my own egg roll wrappers and found them to be too doughy. The best wrappers I found are GF own rice wrappers. I haven’t had an egg roll since adopting a gluten free diet so this was delightful!

A few notes about the recipe: You can either make corned beef and cabbage just for this recipe or use leftovers. If preparing specifically for this recipe, chop everything into small chunks to better fit into the roll. Also, the recipe below is for just 2 pounds of meat. If preparing more, keep in mind that for each pound the meat needs to cook for 50 minutes – 1 hour. As for the spices, many corned beefs available come prepared and often include a spice packet. You can use or not use this packet and if you want extra flavoring, add the spices below to your preference.

INGREDIENTS

  • 2 lbs corned beef
  • ½ a cabbage or 1 bag of shredded cabbage
  • 1 potato
  • 4-5 carrots
  • ½ cup thinly sliced onion
  • 3 cloves garlic
  • salt & pepper to taste
  • optional: cloves, allspice, coriander, bay leaf, mustard seed
  • gluten free white or own rice paper (1 per egg roll)
  • a high heat oil for deep frying

PREPARING THE CORNED BEEF & CABBAGE

  1. In a large pot, cover the corned beef with water. Add desired spices, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, cover & simmer for half an hour.
  2. Pour out the water, replace with fresh water. Bring to a boil, cover & simmer for half an hour.
  3. Once the meat has cooked for a total of 1 hour, turn it over.
  4. Peel the carrots and potato, chop the vegetables and the garlic.
  5. After a total of 1 ½ hours, add the vegetables and garlic. (If cooking a larger portion, add during the last half hour of cooking.)
  6. After 2 hours the meat should be tender. Turn off the heat, remove the meat.
  7. Shred or chop the meat.
  8. Drain the pot, mix the vegetables and corned beef together.

MAKING THE SPRING ROLLS

  1. Heat enough oil in a pot to cover the spring rolls.
  2. Prepare a large bowl of lukewarm water.
  3. Immediately before preparing each roll, dip the rice paper in the water for 2-3 seconds to soften it. Timing is important here - Do not soak or it will dissolve and after dipping do not let it sit for long or it might stick to the surface.
  4. Place 3-4 tablespoons of the corned beef & cabbage mixture in the middle of the rice paper. Fold the side farthest away from you over the mixture, fold in the two sides, and roll it up. Make the roll as tight as you can.
  5. Fry for 7-10 minutes over low heat. If frying multiple rolls as once make sure they do not touch.
  6. Place rolls on a paper towel lined plate.

Note: If the rolls will not stay together while frying you can double wrap them. In that case, they will need to fry for twice as long, to ensure the inside wrapper gets crispy.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!