Spring Roll Showdown: Recipes from Four Countries

The Indonesian spring roll impresses with unique flavors, topping the rankings in a delicious culinary competition.

### Spring Roll Showdown: A Culinary Journey Through Four Countries
* 🥢 Today, we're exploring spring rolls from China, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines, replicating what are believed to be **authentic recipes**.
* 🍖 The Chinese-style filling features sliced pork loin, garlic, dried shiitake mushrooms, napa cabbage, and bamboo shoots, with the unique approach of **cooking all ingredients before wrapping**.
* 🍤 For the Indonesian spring roll, a combination of **chicken, shrimp, and dried shrimp** is used, along with a homemade version of **sweet soy sauce**, creating a **distinct flavor profile**.
* 🥬 The Filipino lumpia is surprisingly simple, consisting of **minced vegetables and ground pork**, seasoned with basic ingredients like **soy sauce and sugar**.
* 🍄 The Vietnamese spring roll stands out with **wood ear mushrooms and glass noodles**, providing a **firmer texture** compared to the vegetable-heavy Filipino version.
* 🏆 In the taste test, **Indonesia took first place**, followed by Vietnam, while China and the Philippines were ranked **third and fourth**, respectively.
* 📈 The creator invites viewers to share their opinions on the rankings and offers cooking classes, emphasizing the **importance of authentic experiences** in each country.
* 🌍 Overall, this culinary adventure highlights the **diversity and unique characteristics** of spring rolls across different cultures, encouraging **further exploration and appreciation** of these dishes.

Today, four countries, four spring rolls. Let's see who comes out on top. Today, we're going to make recipes from China, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines. I found recipes online that I thought were authentic, so we're going to replicate those. We'll make the fillings! We'll roll them! We'll taste them! We'll see which one we think is the best! Let's do it! I got to bring back my piggy. The Chinese-style filling includes: sliced pork loin, garlic, dried shiitake, carrot, napa cabbage, soy sauce, sesame seed oil, bamboo shoots. We're going to start by marinating our sliced pork loin, salt, sesame oil, white pepper, and a little bit of cornstarch. For the vegetables, we'll mince up a clove of garlic, julienne carrot,

We'll slice our rehydrated shiitake mushrooms thinly. Our bamboo will sliced in as well. All these recipes I'm just cutting them in half, so for this recipe calls for a whole small head of Nappa cabbage. So I need a half a head of small Nappa cabbage. That's hard to figure out when I have one large head of Nappa cabbage. So, I'm thinking this is about a half of a small head I guess. We'll cut this thin too. Putting this together so far, the Chinese spring roll mixture is interesting with the amount of cabbage that's used and using sliced pork loin as opposed to minced Pork, which is what I would typically see in a spring roll, and the Chinese styles unique cuz we're going to cook all the ingredients before we wrap them. So, let's start cooking! We're going to start with the pork loin in here. We're

supposed to get a little bit of color on this, and then we're going to go in with the garlic, the carrot, and the mushroom. Next, we're going to add the cabbage and the bamboo. We're going to season this with some soy sauce, white pepper, sesame oil, and some sugar. With the cabbage, we're going to have a lot of water, so we're going to make a cornstarch slurry to thicken it. So, I'm just doing some cornstarch and some water, no measurement here. We'll add this by feel when we need it. The cabbage looks fully wilted and cooked. I would say for me, the most interesting thing or the most unique thing about the Chinese style filling is the amount of vegetables used and the size that they're cut. So, I'm going to put this in the fridge, let it cool down, and we'll start making the Indonesian one next.

So, for the Indonesian spring roll, we have some pretty interesting techniques I've never seen before. The protein in this, instead of being pork, which all the other varieties have, is going to be a combination of chicken and shrimp. And beyond that, we also have some dried shrimp and egg as well. So, let's put this together! These dried shrimp have been soaking for an hour now, and I'm just going to chop them up. Next, we're supposed to marinate the chicken with a sweet soy sauce. Now, I've never heard of sweet soy sauce. I think this is an ingredient typical for Indonesian cuisine, but I just haven't used it before. From my research, it's basically a diluted soy sauce with water and sugar flavor with star anise and ginger and garlic, I think. I don't have that! So, I'm going to make it work! So, I'm going to do some soy,

white pepper. I'm going to do a little garlic powder, a little ginger powder, onion powder. I don't have star anise, so I'm going to do a tiny bit of clove and a tiny bit of cinnamon as well. We'll go ahead and give this a mix, put this to the side. They want us to marinate the shrimp as well, white pepper, and salt. This part seems a little unnecessary to me, but I'm going to follow directions here, and they want me to season it with egg too, so we're going to crack the egg with a little bit of salt, give that a mix, and the glass noodle. I'm just going to chop a little bit. Let's cook. Here, we're going to start with oil and shallots. I'm sorry! Garlic and shallot going down first, dried shrimp is next. I definitely smell the dried shrimp there! We're going to go

chicken next. Next, we'll go with the shrimp, bamboo, and carrots are next. We're going to season this with more soy, pepper, some sugar, and we're going to cook this mixture until it's dry. When the mixture is dried, we're going to add our egg, which is really interesting! And then finish with our noodle. This one's so interesting to me cuz it's like a stir-fried noodle that's kind of light on the noodle, and then we're going to wrap that up. We'll let this cool down! We'll do the famous loompia next. Filipino style is pretty darn easy. I'm surprised! We got some minced carrots, minced onion, minced celery, minced garlic, and an egg ground pork. Everything goes inside. Uh-oh!!! Egg, sesame oil, salt, soy sauce, sugar, and black pepper. Give this a mix! Surprisingly easy! Shockingly simple! I kind of

expected there to be more in this. This is just basic French cooking to me! It's some minced pork and mirror with some soy and sugar and salt. That's cool! Maybe, I'll put a little MSG. I assume that this is the most traditional style, although I think they would use Chinese celery as opposed to Western celery, but I saw so many variations of people putting in mint shrimp as well or they put in Chinese sweet Chinese sausage as well but I think there's many different varieties but I think this is a fairly good representation of the standard style. Vietnamese style next! So, for the Vietnam style, potentially the most unique ingredient thing about it would be the wood ear mushroom which we haven't seen in any other variations. So, if you haven't seen wood ear mushrooms before they're pretty damn cool! You buy them dry. You put them in water for 20 or 30 minutes, they grow really big! They got a little bit of a

chewy texture to them. No matter how long you cook them, they never get soft, so that's pretty cool! We're going to mince these up! Usually, the piece will have like a center like right here. This is really hard and inedible, so you just rip that off or cut it off, but the rest of it is fine. These are very common Vietnamese food. We're also going to chop up a green onion and a shallot, and we have some glass noodle that I soaked as well. We're going to chop this up small. So, just like the Filipino style, we're just going to add everything and mix it up. Other seasonings: sesame oil, oyster sauce, I'm going to do some mushroom seasoning, MSG, sugar, salt, black pepper. It's interesting, the Filipino style is just like ground pork flavored with all the vegetables, and then the Vietnamese style is like just straight ground pork flavor.

but diluted in texture with the ear mushroom and the glass noodle. That's like two very different approaches to a very similar filling. It's time to wrap them! I know at least in Vietnam there are many different kinds of wrappers. They use some are wheat-based, some are rice-based, some have a different like web texture on the outside. But just to keep everything consistent today, I'm going to use one wrapper for all of them so we can focus on the filling and not the wrapper itself. This is very similar to the most common spring roll wrapper you're going to find in America. The one you find in the freezer section. This has a little bit of mung bean flour but it's mostly wheat flour, so it's going to be very similar texture. All right! Let's wrap it! When we're wrapping, we're going to need some kind of glue to keep them together. You can use egg,

you can use just water for making rice paper. You can use water and cornstarch, just water and flour. Anything works! It really doesn't matter! There we go! And I got a little paintbrush for this! Cute little thing! These ones that have the raw meat, these are easier to roll. I can make these bigger with the double wrapper. The ones that are cooked, they're hard to wrap. Like this! So I'll make a bigger one, like that it's fine! shoot!!! got some uneven ones!!! I'm figuring out the sizing here!!! Get the Triforce! okay! I got better! that looks good! So, in terms of sauces. I'm keeping this pretty simple. I have a sweet soy sauce here that I just made simply with some water, sugar, chili, garlic, and soy sauce, thicken it with cornstarch, and then I also have a sweet and sour fish sauce.

dressing, and I'll link the recipe to a previous video I made for that if you're interested. All right! So first, Chinese style! I like the spring roll wrapper! I'll give you a little advance warning, all of these will be good! I like spring rolls! So, this is good! The bamboo shoot is probably the strongest flavor, a little shiitake in there, that's good! A little piece of meat in there, that's good! I wish there was more meat. I guess that's probably my immediate reaction to this. Everything texturally in there is kind of slippery a little bit. I mean, I like it! All right! Let's try Indonesian! Hmm... now the Indonesian, I have no frame of reference. I've never tried an Indonesian spring roll, so I don't know if this is accurate to a true Indonesian spring roll or not. This is good! Texturally

this is more interesting than the Chinese one. I like the noodle inside! I like the spices inside! I like the dried shrimp inside too! Even though, when I'm cooking it, the dried shrimp smell is like strong, but in here, it's nice. There's a little bit of a shrimp flavor to it. It's good! That's pretty darn good! I like that! My immediate reaction is to eat another one, so that's a good sign, but I shouldn't. I'm going to eat a lot of spring rolls! I think some fruit in here would be delicious! Some mango or even some apple in there. Just a little bit more sweetness in there would be awesome. Some fruity sweetness, green mango too, would be good in there. Or maybe I would just serve this with like a green mango relish or some fruity dipping sauce would be really appropriate for that. I like it a lot! All right! The famous Lumpia! Let's try this.

guy! It's good! But coming from the Indonesian one, which actually had some character to it, it doesn't really have any characteristic that stands out to me. It just tastes like pork with some carrots and onion in it. There's not really anything too interesting in here. Once again, I have no frame of reference for Lumpia! I've never been to the Philippines, so I can't comment if this is typical or standard of what you would find. And now, Vietnamese spring roll! Oh no! Why'd I dip in soy sauce? Oh, that's I shouldn't have done that! This has a much firmer texture than the Filipino style, 'cause a Filipino has so many vegetables in it, they kind of loosen up the mixture, where this the ear mushroom doesn't have any water to give out, and the noodle absorbs any water, so this is much firmer. So I appreciate the texture of this more than I

like the Filipino. Now Vietnamese spring rolls I know very well! So, this is a typical spring roll. This one probably has a little bit more noodle than others that I have. I think for Vietnamese style spring rolls I prefer them to have some taro inside as well and some garlic as well. It's good though!! But there's other styles I like more! And the final rankings! First place: Indonesia, second place Vietnam, third and fourth is a hard one! But I got it! Third! It's going to China which leaves us fourth place with the Philippines. I hope you enjoyed the video! If you completely disagree with my rankings let me know what I did wrong! How I can improve the recipe or how your family makes it! I'll try to make it again and improve it. Of course, this is not the end all be all list. This is just my opinion on the day where I found some random recipes online. I'm

sure if I go to the home country of where the spring roll comes from, it'll be amazing and fantastic and S tier all day every day. If you want me to go travel and eat the spring rolls in their home country, give me a like, subscribe to the channel so I can boost on my ranking, make more money. I travel more! It'll be really fun! If you want to go on a food tour and have me take you around to try some of the best spring rolls in Saigon, let me know. I'd love to take you around. Check out chadkubanoff.com if you want to join a cooking class with me or have me cooking dinner in the studio. Check out chadkubanoff.com. Once again, I will see you next time! Peace!

Spring Roll Battle Who Does It Best?

Chad Kubanoff

Spring Roll Showdown: Four Countries, Four Recipes

The video features spring roll recipes from China, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines.

The Chinese-style filling includes sliced pork loin, garlic, dried shiitake, carrot, napa cabbage, soy sauce, sesame seed oil, and bamboo shoots, with a unique cooking method for the ingredients before wrapping.

The narrator emphasizes the interesting use of vegetables and their sizes in the Chinese filling and plans to cool the mixture before moving on to the Indonesian recipe.

Unique Techniques in Indonesian Spring Rolls

The Indonesian spring roll uses a protein combination of chicken and shrimp, along with dried shrimp and egg.

Sweet soy sauce, a key ingredient in Indonesian cuisine, is substituted with a homemade mix of soy sauce, white pepper, and spices.

The filling is cooked with shallots, dried shrimp, chicken, shrimp, bamboo, and carrots, then finished with egg and glass noodles before being wrapped.

The basic style of spring roll filling includes minced pork, soy, sugar, and salt, with variations using ingredients like Chinese celery, mint shrimp, and sweet Chinese sausage.

The Vietnamese style is unique with the addition of wood ear mushrooms, which have a chewy texture and do not soften when cooked.

The filling is further enhanced with green onion, shallot, and soaked glass noodles, while the wrapping process uses a consistent wrapper for all variations.

Rice paper can be made using just water, or a combination of water and cornstarch or flour.

The raw meat-filled wrappers are easier to roll, while the cooked ones are more challenging.

The author prepares simple sauces and experiments with different spring roll styles, expressing enjoyment and suggesting fruity additions for extra sweetness.

Comparing Spring Rolls from Different Countries

The reviewer finds the Indonesian spring roll to have more character and flavor than the others, while the Filipino version is too similar to pork with carrots and onions.

The Vietnamese spring roll has a firmer texture and is preferred for its noodle content, though the reviewer likes other styles more.

The final ranking is Indonesia first, Vietnam second, China third, and the Philippines fourth.