The best egg rolls e-vah! (Yeah I said it)

When I was back in college (it's impolite to ask how long ago that was so: don't), I bought a package of egg roll wraps at the store to try and figure out something to do with them. Coincidently, the package comes with a recipe suggestion which was the foundation for the recipe that I have used over and over again.

Now, first let me tell you that my egg rolls are NOT meant to be eaten as an appetizer, you can have two or even three of these and have it be your meal, period. Secondly, these are not an everyday meal although I will confess that shortly after graduating from college I ate these egg rolls for a whole week straight, breakfast, lunch and dinner... these are the "I'm starting my diet tomorrow and want to pig out" or "I had the bestest, most awesomest day ever and don't want to go drop a huge chunk of change on dinner out" kind of egg rolls, okay? 

So don't go thinking I'm suggesting you incorporate these into your monthly repertoire cause, I'm not.

These are also non-traditional egg rolls - no mushy cabbage/carrot combo here, these get filled with real yummy stuff. First, I cook whatever veggies sound good (or use leftover roasted or grilled veggies from the night before) - in this case I had a bunch of cauliflower, broccoli and snap peas. I roasted the first two and sauted the snap peas.

                 

 Then, I dice up the chicken and coat it in a mixture of cornstarch and soy sauce, trust me on this! If you use 1 TBSP of cornstarch, you need 2 of soy sauce to dissolve it in, I just eyeball it depending on the amount of chicken I'm cooking (for this recipe I had 4 chicken breasts), in this case I had about 3 TBSPs of cornstarch and 6 of the soy sauce.

Chicken - Before, aka Raw

 I decided to add some julienned carrots to the cooked veggie mixture for an extra crunch and flavor.

Let the chicken caramelize in the pan - the cornstarch/soy sauce combo will give it this fantastic end result coating that I have never achieved when using anything else. 

Chicken After, aka Mmmm, Delicious

Heating up the oil

Once you have all of the ingredients ready, you can start to roll the egg rolls. If you don't know how, you can follow the directions that come on the back of the package OR since we live in a much more modern era now, I'm sure you can find a youtube video showing you how to do it. Mine are never the perfect specimen of an egg roll, but I don't care cause they still taste freaking awesome!

Getting the egg rolls filled

Filled and awaiting an oil bath

Cook the egg rolls until they are golden brown - whichever level of golden brown you prefer. Serve two per person with some soy sauce for dipping. I recommend that you cut them in half to let some of the heat out (cause you don't want to burn your mouth) first.

Batch numbers one and two

Batch number three

The cutest sous chef!

This particular recipe yielded 16 egg rolls, meaning I had enough filling for that number. If you happen to have leftovers: for reheating I recommend that you nuke them for a minute and then stick them in your toaster oven or regular oven and bake them for a little bit to get them to crisp up again before you devour them. However, these are best eaten fresh, enjoy!!