Spring Rolls

This is my favorite picnic food! It is not exactly the easiest thing to make, but the satisfaction that you have made your very own delicious spring rolls makes them worth the work.

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Here's what you need to make them:

Thai rice noodles

Rice paper (I recommend the Three Ladies Brand)

Meat of your choice (I usually do shrimp or pork but chicken or steak would work too!)

Veggies of your choice (cucumbers, carrots, bell peppers)

I start off by cooking the meat. You can grill it or season it in any way. I personally like to cook the shrimp in lemon juice with some lemon pepper seasoning.

Once you have the meat cooking, boil the water for the rice noodles. It's important to break the noodles into half their size before putting them in the water to cook otherwise they will be too long to put into the rice paper.

Then, you need to start cutting your vegetables. Make sure that you cut them EXTREMELY thin strips.

After the meat and the noodles are done, they need to cool off so they won't burn your fingers off while you are trying to assemble them. If you chose not to use shrimp then you would need to cut your meat into think strips as well.

This is the fun part! Once everything is cooled you can start putting your spring rolls together. First off, get the rice paper wet with warm water and run the water down the front and the back side of the rice paper. Then, put it on a plate.

You have to be slightly fast at assembling your spring rolls because the rice paper will not stay soft and wet forever.

Put the noodles down first, then the veggies, and then the meat. (The order actually doesn't matter but that's what I did today!)

Roll the rice paper horizontally until all the ingredients are in the spring roll. Secure the ends by folding them on top of the spring roll.

Keep doing this until you have used all of your ingredients.

And you're done! They really are worth all the work that you put into them.