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How to Make Healthy and Delicious Summer Rolls VIDEO

I love summer rolls — crunchy, fresh, and flavorful all wrapped in a delicate rice paper wrapper. Summer rolls are one of those things I never thought I could make at home. The wrappers, the rolling, the sauce! Not only are they way easier than I imagined, but they can be quite the nutritious dish to boot. Filled with loads of raw veggies and herbs, a summer roll is like a salad all wrapped up in a neat little package. In the video above, I go a pretty traditional route with avocado, cabbage, carrots and herbs, but also I use less traditional roasted sweet potato sticks and shredded Brussels sprouts. Rice paper is so neutral. Who says you couldn’t put a cobb salad in there or poached chicken, corn, cabbage and barbecue sauce? I say the sky’s the limit and can we talk about perfect these would be for school lunches?! Per-fect!

If you want to make these in advance, cover them with a damp paper towel and refrigerate for ideally up to one day, but I’ve even kept them 2 or 3 days.

Healthy and Delicious Summer Rolls

Pamela

5 from 4 votes

Print Recipe

Servings rolls

Ingredients

For the sauce:
2 Tablespoons creamy peanut butter preferably organic (or cashew or almond butter)
1 Tablespoon unrefined cold-pressed extra-virgin olive oil
1 Tablespoon unseasoned rice vinegar
½ Tablespoon raw honey choose a mild flavor
½ Tablespoon water
½ Tablespoon shoyu or gluten-free tamari
pinch sea salt
pinch cayenne pepper
For the summer rolls:
8 8-inch rice paper rounds, plus additional in case some tear
1 large sweet potato (peeled if desired) and cut into ¼” matchsticks
unrefined coconut oil or extra virgin olive oil for drizzling
sea salt and black pepper to taste
4 medium brussels sprouts thinly sliced or shredded
¼ head of small red cabbage thinly sliced or shredded
2 medium carrots shredded, grated, or julienned
1 large avocado cut into thin slices
handful each of fresh mint leaves basil leaves and cilantro leaves
Other possibilities: cooked shrimp chicken, tempeh or tofu, cooked rice noodles

Instructions

To make the sauce: whisk together all of the ingredients in a bowl or a glass jar and set aside. *
To make the summer rolls: Drizzle the sweet potatoes with oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast in a 400 degree oven for 18-20 minutes until tender.
Fill a shallow baking dish or a skillet with warm water. Soak 1 rice paper round (make sure there are no holes) in warm water until pliable, 30 seconds to 1 minute. Remove from the water and transfer to a plate or cutting board.
Spread 2 teaspoons of peanut sauce on the rice paper (or omit and use as a dip once rolls are assembled) and top with 2-3 large mint leaves, 1-2 large basil leaves, a pinch of cilantro leaves, a
pinch each of the Brussels sprouts, cabbage, and carrot, a few sticks of sweet potato, and a couple of avocado slices, taking care not to overstuff. Roll up rice paper tightly around filling, folding in sides and continue rolling.
Transfer summer roll to a plate and cover with dampened paper towels.
Make the remaining rolls in the same manner. Serve rolls halved on the diagonal.
Store in the fridge covered with a damp paper towel 2-3 days.

Notes

* Sauce can be refrigerated for up to 5 days. Bring to room temperature and re-emulsify before using.

Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!

You are going to have so much fun making these summer rolls!

By the way, I have a YouTube channel! I would love it if you subscribed over here. Thank you!

How to perfectly cook gluten-free pasta

I was chatting with a few ladies in my class the other day about cooking for their gluten-free children. Whereas it is certainly easier to find gluten-free alternatives today than it was 10 years ago, apparently cooking gluten-free pasta is still tricky for many people. So I promised them that I would write a post ASAP. Voila!

As you know, I am not gluten-free and neither is my husband nor my kids. BUT, because gluten is a pro-inflammatory protein (found in many grains like wheat) and usually in a lot of processed food, I do limit our gluten to no more than one serving a day. I also think it’s important to have as much variety in our diet as possible to expose yourself to the benefits of many different foods, so that’s another reason I try to mix it up a little in the pasta department and work some gluten-free options into our meals.

I grew up eating a lot of pasta. My father is from Italy and my mother is Italian-American. So I know how to cook traditional durum wheat pasta with my eyes closed. But gluten-free pasta is not the same. It can be starchy, sticky, clumpy and lose it’s shape if you cook it the same way as regular wheat pasta. So I wanted to share my technique that I have used successfully for many years. Keep in mind that different brands and especially different flour blends will take different amounts of time, but the technique is the same. Here goes:

Boil plenty of water.

Add 1 Tablespoon of kosher salt. (This is to flavor the pasta. No need to waste expensive sea salt here.)

Add pasta and stir often. (This is so that the pasta doesn’t stick to each other.) You do not need to add oil to any pasta, gluten-free or otherwise.

When you add the pasta, set your timer for the least amount of time that the package directions indicate. For example, with Trader Joe’s Brown Rice and Quinoa spaghetti, it says to cook for 7-10 minutes. I set my timer for 7 minutes.

Lower the heat so that the water simmers, and is not raging boiling. This is important. Rapid boiling is what causes the pasta to lose its shape.

MOST IMPORTANT STEP: When the timer goes off, turn off the heat and let the pasta remain in the hot water. Taste the pasta. It should still be a little hard. Scoop out a little pasta water and reserve.

Allow the pasta to sit in the hot water with the heat off until you have your desired tenderness, which means you may need to test it every 30 seconds.

Drain and immediately toss with your sauce, pesto or whatever. DO NOT RINSE PASTA, unless you want to use it in a cold dish. The starches on the outside of the pasta will help sauces, etc. stick. Use the reserved pasta water to add extra moisture to the pasta as needed. Keep in mind, gluten-free pasta does not sit as well as regular pasta, so try to serve immediately or at the least, keep that reserved pasta water on hand in case.

My last post on Friday highlighted my favorite GF pasta of the moment, Trader Joe’s Organic Quinoa and Brown Rice pasta. There are others I like too. I wrote a post on my favorites a few years ago here which included brands like Tinkyada and Bionaturae.

pasta

Crispy salt and vinegar potatoes recipe

Roasted potatoes are a no-brainer side dish that I can confidently place on most of my dinner menus. Whether they’re cut into sticks, wedges or quarters, with rosemary or thyme or just with sea salt, everyone loves tender, crispy potatoes. If I have an extra few minutes, I’ll par boil, smoosh, and then roast them. (Recipe here.) And if I really want to wow everyone, I’ll make them extra crispy and toss them with vinegar. My son (who normally likes to keep his food as simple as possible) absolutely loves these because “it’s kind of like eating salt and vinegar potato chips.” Only better! Picture a warm and crusty potato potato with a little tang and salt and you have my dream spud.

If you’re in the never-ending SoCal heatwave, feel free to wait until the temperature dips below 90 degrees before you make these since you’ll be cranking up the oven pretty high. With high oven temps (i.e. 400 and above,) we need to be mindful of damaging the fat we use. The best and most healthful way to go is with saturated fats which can withstand higher temperatures without oxidizing. The reason we want to avoid oxidized fats is because they are pro-inflammatory and have developed free radicals. The saturated fats I use regularly for high heat cooking are ghee, which is a clarified butter, and coconut oil. I also use duck fat once in a blue moon and primarily on potatoes. With this recipe, duck fat would be ideal, but I use a combination of ghee and olive oil. The flavor of all ghee would be a little strong, so I prefer to temper it with some olive oil. In addition, combining olive oil and a saturated fat will help protect the olive oil when cooking. If you’re not ready for ghee or you don’t have any, you can use all olive oil.

This method of roasting potatoes is my favorite, even without the vinegar. It’s definitely a little more work than cutting them and throwing them on a sheet pan, but the crispy bits can’t be beat and we all fight over them. The idea is to boil the potato pieces first and then beat them up or “chuff” them a little, thereby creating a rough exterior and more edges to get crispy. It’s a genius method I adapted from Jamie Oliver. The idea for the vinegar and salt comes from this Bon Appetit recipe. However you can definitely put your own spin on this, adding cheese on top of the potatoes in the last 5-10 minutes or serving them with a spicy mustard. You are going to looooove these!