Egg Rolls & Nuoc Mam recipe

As I was getting my daily dosage of Twitter one day few weeks ago, I happened upon Pink's tweet who said and I quote "NUOC MAM IS TO BE AVOIDED TOO!" At first I was puzzled by this tweet and responded "What's wrong with Nuoc Mam? I happen to love it!". I guess I should've kept my big mouth shut, because somehow I was dained "Nuoc Mam Queen", all because I came to its defense and clueless that I had walked into an inside joke. =P

So in light of my newly acquired (hoping to live it down) title, I've decided to create a recipe post on how to make Nuoc Mam and what type of food pairs perfectly with this sauce, so here goes.

This egg roll recipe came from my mom who constantly forced me to help her with it during every holiday or special occassion as a kid. I suppose I have her to thank that I have this recipe memorized by heart years later when I decided cooking wasn't so bad after all.


Ingredients are: spring roll wraps, 1/4 lb of ground beef, a handful of shredded carrots, 1/2 an onion, 2 eggs, a handful of shrimp, clear noodles, salt and pepper

Place the ground beef, carrots, chopped onions, clear noodles and chopped shrimp into a bowl to mix.

Create a little hole, add the two eggs, 1 teaspoon of salt and pepper then mix well

You'll need to separate the wraps individually for easier access

Place a teaspoonful of the beef mixture onto one point of the square wrap and create a nice oval shape (no more than that to allow even cooking time)

Then wrap the point over the beef mixture snuggly

Take the two points on the side and fold each one over the beef mixture.

Then roll and dip your finger into the egg mixture onto the last point and seal it close.

Continue the process till you have a nice stack of eggrolls

Now heat 2 cup of oil in a deep frying pan on medium. Make sure the oil gets heated well so that the eggrolls cook faster and less oil is absorbed into the rolls during frying process.

Allow the eggrolls to fry a bit until it gets golden one one side (hubby took care of the frying as I took pictures) I'm not particularly into the whole splattered oil scene.

Once you see it's golden, flip to the other side and do the same.

You should now have a nice plate of golden-fried egg rolls.

Now for the long-awaited dipping sauce recipe: Nuoc Mam. Also, you may wonder why a chinese girl would know how to make Nuoc Mam. Well, I'll tell you my ladies. =) I've known my stepdad who's Vietnamese since I was 7, so naturally we were in tuned to the culture and food. I can understand the language pretty well but speaking it is entirely different.

Anyways, onto the recipe:


You'll need fish sauce (very important), lime juice, garlic, ground chili paste, sugar and water.


First, 1/4 cup of fish sauce into a bowl


I used to have to squeeze a bag of limes just to get a good amount of lime juice. Thank goodness for bottled lime juice nowadays. 1/4 cup


a teaspoon of ground chili paste

4 teaspoons of garlic; 3 soupful of sugar (or according to taste); Add 1/4 cup of water (not pictured) and give it a good stir.

Et Voila! You got yourself home-made Nuoc Mam. Now I did this all by eye-balling and adjusted per tasting to get it right. So it could be different for how you like it so adjust according to taste.
Ok, so some of you may not have the time to make Nuoc Mam from scratch. Well, fear not ladies. You can actually pick a bottle up all ready made at your local asian market. I happen to find mine at my local Hmart of all places. I never actually thought they would have it but hey saves me a trip to the vietnamese grocery stores. =)

I like to eat my eggrolls wrapped in lettuce. Doesn't this make it healthier =P

Dip it into the Nuoc Mam sauce

Mmmm... Good

Enjoy my lovelies =)

Posted by: ~Mel // at Saturday, April 25, 2009 //

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