Name: Lumpiang Shanghai
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 20 min
Total time: 50 min
Yield: 6 servings
Cuisine: Filipino
Ingredients: 500 g minced pork; 1 carrot, very finely diced; 6 water chestnuts, finely diced; 1 onion, very finely chopped; 4 garlic cloves, crushed; 2 spring onions, finely sliced; 2 tbsp light soy sauce; 1 tsp fine sea salt; 1 tsp ground black pepper; 1 egg; 30 spring roll wrappers, 15 cm square; 3 tbsp plain flour mixed with 4 tbsp water; 700 ml vegetable oil, for frying; 6 tbsp sweet chilli sauce

Lumpiang Shanghai

Thin pork and vegetable spring rolls, rolled pencil-thin and fried hard. Filipino parties are counted in these.

50 min total Serves 6 servings Medium

Roll them thin — no thicker than a finger — and seal with a flour and water paste rather than egg. A thick lumpia has a raw centre by the time the wrapper is golden, and egg-sealed edges pop open in the oil. Freeze them on a tray before frying if you have made a batch: they hold their shape better and the wrapper crisps harder from cold.

Lumpiang Shanghai, in preparation
Photograph credit: Lumpia Shanghai from HapaSF at Off the Grid:Civic Center's Monday inaugural by Gary Soup · CC BY 2.0 · Flickr

How to Make Lumpiang Shanghai

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Mix the pork with the carrot, water chestnuts, onion, garlic, spring onions, soy sauce, salt, pepper and egg.
Fry a teaspoon of the mixture to taste it, and correct the seasoning.
Lay a wrapper as a diamond and put a thin line of filling across the lower third — about a tablespoon, no more.
Fold the bottom corner up, fold both sides in tightly, and roll into a pencil-thin cylinder.
Seal the last corner with the flour paste.
Repeat with the rest, keeping the finished rolls covered.
Heat the oil to 175°C / 345°F.
Fry in batches of six for 5 minutes, turning, until deep gold and cooked through.
Drain on a rack, not on paper.
Cut each in half on the diagonal and serve with sweet chilli sauce.

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Worth Getting Right

Pencil-thin. A fat lumpia is raw inside.
Flour paste to seal, never egg.
Freeze before frying if you are making a lot.

If You're Missing Something

Out of spring onions? A small regular onion, finely sliced, or a few chives stirred in at the end both cover the job.
Dried chilli flakes can stand in for the chilli. Heat varies a great deal between chillies and between jars, so start with a small pinch and add more to taste.
An eighth of a teaspoon of garlic powder per clove is the stand-in usually given when you are out of fresh garlic; it will not brown the same way, and it burns easily, so add it with the liquid.

Pairs Well With

Sweet chilli sauce · Banana ketchup · Cold beer

Storage

Freeze unfried for 3 months and fry from frozen, adding 2 minutes.

Lumpiang Shanghai Nutrition Facts

No nutrition figures are given for this recipe: they cannot be worked out reliably from its ingredient list (some ingredient lines cannot be read). Why some recipes have none.

Dairy-Free