Fresh Vietnamese Summer Roll Recipe with Nuoc Cham Sauce!

Hey guys, Jeremy here from School of Wok Covent Garden. It's Wok Wednesdays, we're getting closer to summer and we're making summer rolls. Nice and fresh, no wok cooking today, just fresh stuff. First things first, you've got to prep your veg. I've got some cucumber here. You are going to use cucumber. You want to get the seeds out. Don't waste it, make sure you eat it. You're going to matchstick all your veg up. Next up, some red pepper. Again, nice fine matchsticks. It's all about that variation of colour. It's almost as if a Vietnamese summer roll is like the Vietnamese version of sushi. It's got to look beautiful. Got some carrot. You want to get similar sized matchsticks. Good to keep your veg separate once it's sliced. Some lettuce. You really don't need a lot of each of these to make plenty of summer rolls because there's so much veg in there. Got a nice bit of veg cut up and ready to go. The famous nok cham, your dipping sauce. Nice and limey. There's a million different ways of juicing lime. I find the easiest is just get your hands in there. Another trick is using a fork and twisting into the fork. Plenty of lime juice there. You can put rice vinegar in this. I'd rather go for that fresh lime flavour. I'm going to do a couple of good tablespoons of palm sugar. A couple of spoons of that. We're going to get saltiness from your fish sauce. It's very salty stuff so just go easy on it. Melt that palm sugar into there. If you don't have palm sugar, you can use honey, brown sugar, white sugar. You do need to balance out that sourness with something sweet. A little bit of water. Put some bird eye chillies, finely chopped. And about a clove of finely chopped garlic. I feel like it could do with a little bit more fish sauce. Obviously we're dealing with natural ingredients here. The lime is probably a little bit sweeter than whoever wrote the recipe. You might need to add a little bit of fish sauce here or there. Just go by taste. We're getting there. That chilli's got a kick. That is now ready to go. Onto the folding. A Vietnamese rice paper is essentially a rice pancake. The reason why you have these striations or these different criss-cross lines is that when it's dried, it's dried on a bamboo basket. You can almost imagine the base of that basket with those holes through that woven bamboo. You can use cold water or hot water to soak your pastry. With cold water, it's better for when you're learning because it takes a little bit more time to soak up that excess water. Obviously when you're learning, time is key. Having that extra minute or so to think about what's going to happen is actually quite useful. Over time, you'll see or feel that your pastry is getting drier. It's starting to soak that water in. I'll show you how quick it is with hot water after this. We start to compile our summer roll now. I've got a selection of herbs. We haven't got any with us here today, but you can find a herb called sawtooth coriander. It's very Vietnamese. I've got Thai basil. I've got some fresh mint. I've also got some coriander. It's nice to get those fresh herbs in there. Variation of color, of course. I don't want to overfill this. That's a nice bright red pepper. Mix that up with my cucumber. I'm just layering my summer roll here. Some carrot, just to line that nicely. I've got some lettuce, kind of like a Vietnamese-style tortilla. I've got some glass noodles here. They've just been soaked in hot water for about three minutes. Some mung bean vermicelli. Now you can see the pastry's all shriveled up. It's had that time. It's a cold pastry. We're learning. We're taking our time to make this. We're going to go straight over the top, like so. It's quite sticky now and relatively delicate. Roll to the center. You can see now why I've put the leaves at the bottom. It just looks beautiful that way. At this point, if you are going to put the prawns or anything like that inside, this is the time to do it because when you put your prawns in, you can then see them. You've got your edges of the pastry, which you wrap over the top here. Then your prawns just get tucked into that pastry when you close it up. When you're rolling it and closing it, just tighten it that little bit more so you can see the prawn in there. If you're using boiling hot water to soak your pastries, you've got to work a lot quicker. I've got a clean cloth here on a board so it soaks up any excess water whilst you're compiling. Now we can start to compile our veg. Cucumber, carrot, red pepper, lettuce for added crunch, herbs. I'm just going to start to roll. You can see how much quicker that soaking has happened from the hot water. I'm going to roll over and then start to add my herbs. Again, you can just keep this completely veggie if you wish. Or you've got prawns. I've actually got some of my Vietnamese bánh mì beef, that lemongrass beef here. Don't waste it. Bring the sides over and finish off your roll. That looks great. Look at that. I'm trying to build up a selection of summer rolls here. Once you've made your summer rolls, time to serve up. It's quite nice to cut them in half to showcase what's inside. If you rolled them nice and tight, you can see the beautiful colours inside the rolls themselves. Sit them up on the plate. Nothing better than a fresh bite of summer roll. Let's go for the lemongrass beef. Love it. So light and fresh. The way a summer roll should be. As you can see, you can put whatever you want inside a summer roll. Whether it's meat, some prawns, or just keep it nice and veggie. If you like what you see, don't forget to subscribe to our channel and like our videos.