Shrimp and Avocado Summer Rolls Recipe : Season 3, Ep. 3 - Chef Julie Yoon

We recently painted this wall and not only did it take us much longer to do than we expected, but it was also extremely hot that day. So by the time we were done, all I could do was muster up enough strength to go into the kitchen and make my shrimp and avocado summer rolls. They're my take on a Vietnamese fresh spring roll and I serve them with an easy peanut dipping sauce. It's perfect for hot and busy summer days. So grab your rice paper wrappers and I'll show you how to make these. I feel like nothing screams summer and hot weather food like these shrimp and avocado summer rolls and all you're going to need for them is rice paper wrappers, vermicelli rice noodles, avocado, cilantro, shrimp, mint, cucumber, spring mix lettuce, sriracha, peanut butter, water, soy sauce, sugar, peanuts, and lime. I'm starting out with my easy peanut dipping sauce. So I just have a quarter cup of creamy peanut butter and I'm just gonna squeeze in the juice of one lime. To that, I'm just gonna add a little salt with a tablespoon of soy sauce, a little sweetness with two teaspoons of sugar, heat with one tablespoon of sriracha sauce. Of course, if you're not a fan of heat, you can cut it down and you need to thin it out because it's a little chunky. I'm just using tap water. A little trick is also if you're having a hard time getting it to get going, just pop it in the microwave for a few seconds too and everything will warm up. It'll be much easier for you. I also have roughly one tablespoon, one to two tablespoons of chopped roasted peanuts and I'm just going to put this on at the end when I'm ready to serve. Just sprinkle it on top of your little bowls and after this is nicely whisked up, I'm just going to pop it in the fridge so it can chill and meld together a little bit and I can just move on to my summer rolls. So there's only minimal amount of cooking, which I love. So all you do is grab six large shrimp. Mine came frozen with the shells removed, deveined already and the tails on, so I just plunged them into the water and then I just poached them for literally about a minute or just until you see the shrimp start to turn pink and the tails start to curl under. Once that's done, you just pull them out because you don't want them to overcook. Then you just carefully split them in half lengthwise so that you're left with 12 thin pieces of shrimp. Next, you just grab that same pot, fill it up with some more water, bring it to a boil and you grab two ounces of rice vermicelli noodles. And I love these guys because they cook up in an instant. All you do is once the water comes to a boil, turn it off, plunge the noodles in and let them sit for three minutes. Well, that's what my package instructions say, so just follow yours. It should be roughly around three to five minutes and then all you do is just drain them, give them a rinse in cold water and then put them onto a plate and divide them up into four little piles. That way you know exactly how many noodles to put in each roll. I'm just going to start with roughly half of a smallish cucumber, but it's kind of chubby, so I'm going to just slice it in half lengthwise. After I slice it in half, lay it down and you just want thinnish, and I say thinnish strips because you don't want like paper thin. Now traditionally, I would say that you're probably used to summer rolls slash fresh spring rolls. I don't know what you want to call it. Having shrimp and pork, it's a good combination and I love it too, but I didn't feel like cooking yet another thing, so I decided to replace it, replace the pork with avocado. I have to give snaps to someone who left a comment. I said I don't like pulling the pits out of avocados this way, and they gave me a cool tip which I always use now. They said instead of doing that, just poke it through from the other side and then the seed will pop out, and it does. Isn't this so cool? So thank you. I love comments from you guys. This is why I ask you questions. I'm just going to give it a couple of slices. Instead of scooping it out with a spoon, I think I'm just going to peel it so I can have the maximum amount of green on the avocado. That's about it. So I'm just going to wash up and get my water ready. I'm going to fill a pan full of water so that I can moisten my rice papers and then we'll get wrapping. And now I'm going to use round rice paper wrappers and these gigantic ones. I'm kind of cheating, I'll have to say, but at the time I was at the store, these were the only size I could find. You could use hot warm water, but I'm kind of using cold to warm water and I'm using a pan because it's just it'll fit nicely in here. So you're just going to dip it in there and you're just going to let it float and do its thing for, I don't know, like maybe under 20 seconds. In the past when I would make these guys, I would soak them for way too long. I was waiting for them to get super soft and pliable. And then by the time I try to stretch it out on my surface, they were just like a big blubber and hot old mess. Like that's good enough for me. It's still a little crunchy and plasticky, but soft enough. I'm going to start off with my one pile of noodles. So I get one little bird's nest and spread that out on maybe the lowest third, if that's how you want to divide your paper up and make sure you have like about an inch and a half border. Then you're going to put a little bit of lettuce. Now I'm using the spring mix lettuce because I just like that it's soft and there's a lot of different colors to it. I'm going to add in my cilantro because, I mean, that's classic and it smells fragrant and mint is not an herb that I normally just always have on hand, but in the summer it's abundant. It's just makes everything so fragrant. I mean, this looks like it's going to explode and it is, but it'll crush down a little bit. The row above it. So right here, right next to it, the next layer, you're going to add in your avocado and then the row above that, the next layer, you're going to add in your shrimp. So I have three pieces of shrimp, use the orange side facing down. So that for presentation purposes. So you got one, two, three layers and you're going to roll one, two, three times. Oops, I forgot my cucumber. You're going to grab it and roll it tightly. Then you're going to do the burrito action and you're going to tuck in the sides. And so this is the part where you do have to work fast. It helps if you're not filming a video like me and like chit-chatting it up, roll it over tightly over the avocado. And right before you get to the shrimp layer, you're going to add in some decorative element of some chives. And this is kind of like the little cute restaurant touch. And then I'm going to roll over the final. And until you get to the end, there you have it. I mean, this is really fat because I was pretty greedy with my ingredients and I'm going to get a damp paper towel just so that it stays It's a little bit sticky, yes. You can use a spoon for the dipping sauce too. And you might want to stir it up a little bit because it's kind of sitting there. You know what's funny? You can start eating. I'm going to be chatting. As we were filming, it just kept getting warmer and warmer in here. Good. Refreshing, huh? So this is the perfect little bite to end our shooting because it is a little warm now, but I'm excited. My stomach was rumbling like crazy throughout this whole episode. My sauce came out a little bit more liquidy than I remember. I think I didn't measure the water correctly. So if yours looks a little too thin, then just add more peanut butter. Hits the spot. So refreshing. The peanut sauce is limey and creamy, a little bit spicy, a tiny bit sweet, and it's just the perfect complement. This is perfect picnic food, appetizers for a party. For substitutions, really, you can put whatever filling you want. I mean, if you want to keep it a lower carb, you don't even have to add the noodles. It'll just be a meal. You can make it vegetarian by adding more avocado and even some fried tofu. You can even, if you're in a pinch, use rotisserie chicken instead of shrimp. Then you don't have to cook anything at all, and that's perfect. So I hope you enjoyed watching this and spending time with me today, and I hope you give this recipe a try. Be sure to stay tuned for our behind the scenes. We'll leave a link for you. And if you enjoyed watching this one, let us know. Remember to push like, leave a comment down below, and subscribe to our channel. Thanks so much for watching, and we'll see you next time. Bye! Bye! I feel like it's everything you need in one bite. Time to cool down. It's all you need in life. I could eat this all summer long.