Vegan Dirty Rice Egg Rolls
I often have leftover dirty rice when I make it. I have found that it freezes and reheats very well but sometimes it’s fun to change it up a little. With just a few more steps dirty rice becomes a very delicious side dish.
Serve them with your favorite dip or chutney. I have chosen a Polynesian style sauce mixed with a bit of Chinese chili oil. I have also used sweet Thai chili sauce. You can’t go wrong with either one if you’re not into chutney as I am not into chutney.
The recipe for vegan dirty rice can be found in a blog post here on this blog. The batch I made in this post looks a little different than the original because I used black beans instead of vegan meat substitute. Both versions are tasty. Do what works best for you.
If you want to use black beans you could use drained and rinsed canned black beans or cook them yourself from dry beans. I never had good luck with cooking black beans until I got an Instantpot. To cook beans in an instantpot you just put a layer of dry beans in the bottom of the instantpot and sift through them to make sure there aren’t any small stones or other debris in the beans. Then rinse the beans thoroughly and drain the water away. put clean water into the instantpot deep enough to cover the beans and if you touched one of the beans with your index finger the water would come up just past your first knuckle. Add 2 teaspoons of salt and 1 tablespoon of garlic powder. Cook the beans on the chili/beans setting.
You will need some vegan friendly egg roll wrappers. I find them quite easily at my local grocery stores. Naysoya makes plant based egg roll wrappers and I can always find them at Target or Walmart as well as specialty stores in my city. The Naysoya egg roll packaging has a thin cardboard label inside it that includes recipes and instructions on how to fold the wrappers into egg rolls in case you need some tips on that.
If you can’t find vegan egg roll wrappers you can use spring roll wrappers either the flour based ones or the rice ones that become a bit see through when wet, those are usually used in the fresh spring rolls you get in Thai restaurants but you can fry them.
I deep fried these egg rolls but you can shallow fry, air fry them or bake them. If you choose to bake them I recommend you put some oil on the outside so they get crispy. I would bake them at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for about 10 minutes.
Ingredients:
leftover dirty rice
a big handful of greens of your choice
about 1 1/2 teaspoons of Tony’s Creole seasoning
about 1 1/2 tablespoons of cooking oil
vegan friendly egg roll wrapper
In a large frying pan put the cooking oil to saute the greens. You want a very big handful because once the have cooked they will shrink down to a fraction of the size. Add the Tony’s Creole Seasoning to the greens and cook them just until they have all turned dark green and are soft. Use kitchen scissors to chop up the greens into bite size pieces.
Mix the cooked greens with the leftover dirty rice so that it is nice and evenly combined. Let it all cool in the fridge for about half an hour while letting your egg roll wrappers sit on the counter to come up to room temperature. having cold insides and room temperature wrappers is the best way to help your egg roll wrappers stay in tact and not rip when you roll them up.
Once you have rolled them all and cooked them with your chosen method, serve them with the dipping sauce of your choice.
These egg rolls can be stored in the freezer and reheated later.