Spring rolls and summer rolls: what’s the difference?
The English names overlap. Fresh or fried tells you more.
Ninja City
Start with fresh or fried
On many English-language menus, summer rolls means fresh Vietnamese rice-paper rolls, while spring rolls means a fried roll. Other menus use spring rolls for both. Check the description before you order.
Gỏi cuốn is the Vietnamese name for the fresh salad roll. It can hold cooked pork or shrimp, rice noodles, lettuce and herbs inside softened rice paper. The finished roll is left unfried. The name doesn’t tie it to summer.
Rice paper can be fried, too
Chả giò are Vietnamese fried rolls. Rice paper can wrap these as well as fresh gỏi cuốn, so a rice-paper wrapper alone won’t tell you which kind you’re getting.
The cooking changes the bite: a fresh roll has a soft, flexible wrapper around the filling; a fried roll has a crisp shell. Meat, vegetables, noodles and sauces vary by recipe. There isn’t one filling or dipping sauce that belongs to every roll.
Our O.G. Spring Rolls
Ours are hand-rolled with pork and mixed vegetables. An order has two, with sweet garlic vinaigrette for dipping. We serve them at lunch and dinner.
At dinner, the Ninja Sampler puts them alongside Sizzling Gyoza and edamame. It’s a way to try the pork rolls and chicken or vegetable dumplings together.
Keep reading
Further reading
Andrea Nguyen: Stop Calling Gỏi Cuốn “Summer Rolls”