Gỏi Cuốn Vietnamese Spring Rolls are Fresh! (Recipe)

Who doesn’t enjoy a good spring roll? Eaten with your hands, they make for great starters.

Spring rolls are served as appetizers in many East Asian and Southeast Asian countries. Fried varieties like Filipino lumpia or Vietnamese chả giò are tasty, but for me, fresh spring rolls are the best. In the Phiippines, we have lumpiang sariwa (fresh lumpia). In Malaysian or Singapore, you can find different types of popiah. I haven’t tried them but I’ve read that popiah, both fresh and fried, is popular in Taiwan and Thailand as well. There are many varieties of fresh spring rolls but my hands down favorite is the Vietnamese gỏi cuốn. Translucent with alternating hues of orange and green, not only are they some of the tastiest fresh spring rolls, they’re also among the prettiest.

Gỏi cuốn is a Vietnamese fresh spring roll made with shrimp, pork, vegetables, herbs, and rice vermicelli wrapped in bánh tráng or Vietnamese rice paper. One of the most…