Chả giò facts for kids
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| Alternative names | Nem rán, imperial roll, Vietnamese fried spring roll |
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| Course | Hors d'oeuvre |
| Place of origin | Southern Vietnam |
| Region or state | South East Asia |
| Main ingredients | Ground pork, mushrooms, cellophane noodles, various julienned vegetables (carrots, kohlrabi, jicama), rice paper |
Chả giò (Vietnamese: [ca᷉ː jɔ̂]), also known as nem rán or Vietnamese fried spring rolls, is a super popular dish from Vietnamese cuisine. You'll often find it served as a tasty starter, or appetizer, in many places, especially in Europe and North America. It's made by wrapping seasoned ground meat, usually pork, in a special thin rice paper. Then, it's deep-fried until it's golden and crispy!
Contents
What is Chả giò?
Chả giò is a delicious fried roll. It's a bit like an egg roll, but it uses a different kind of wrapper. The main idea is to take a mix of yummy ingredients, roll them up tightly, and then fry them until they are super crunchy.
What's Inside? (Ingredients)
The basic chả giò roll usually has seasoned ground meat, mushrooms, and thin vermicelli noodles. It also often includes diced vegetables like carrots, kohlrabi, and jicama. All these ingredients are carefully rolled inside a moist sheet of rice paper. After rolling, the chả giò is deep-fried until the rice paper wrapper becomes wonderfully crispy and golden brown.
But here's a cool fact: the ingredients for chả giò are not always the same! While pork is the most common meat, some people use crab, shrimp, or chicken. In northern Vietnam, you might even find them made with snails! For those who don't eat meat, there's a vegetarian version called chả giò chay which uses tofu.
Adding diced carrots and jicama makes the inside of the roll a bit crunchy, which goes great with the crispy wrapper. However, the juices from these veggies can sometimes make the rolls soft if they sit for too long. If you want to keep the rolls crispy for a longer time, mashed sweet potato or mung beans can be used instead. Other ingredients that can be added include bean sprouts, rice vermicelli, eggs, and various spices. Sometimes, if jicama isn't available, people use julienned taro root and carrots. Taro root can give the roll a rich, fatty, and crunchy taste.
Special Chả giò Rế
There's a special kind of chả giò called Chả giò rế. This one is unique because it uses bánh hỏi instead of regular rice paper. Bánh hỏi is a type of very thin rice vermicelli woven into a sheet. The filling inside chả giò rế is the same as regular chả giò, and it's also deep-fried.
Because the bánh hỏi sheets are narrow and the vermicelli strands are delicate, chả giò rế rolls are often smaller and a bit tricky to make. You usually only see them at big parties or in fancy restaurants.
What's really interesting about chả giò is that there's no single "official" recipe. Each family in Vietnam might have its own special way of making it. The recipe can also change depending on the region of Vietnam. This means that the chả giò a wife makes for her family often shows how much she cares!
How to Eat Chả giò (Condiments)
Chả giò is super versatile! You can eat it all by itself, which is delicious. But often, people dip it into a special sauce called nước chấm or nước mắm pha. This sauce is usually made from fish sauce mixed with things like lime juice (or vinegar), water, sugar, garlic, and chili pepper. It adds a wonderful tangy, sweet, and spicy kick!
Another popular way to enjoy chả giò is with rice vermicelli noodles. This dish is sometimes called bún chả giò. It's also very common to serve chả giò with a plate of rau sống, which means "raw vegetables." This usually includes fresh lettuce, coriander, and other greens. Many people like to wrap a piece of chả giò in a lettuce leaf before taking a bite. It adds a fresh, crisp contrast to the warm, fried roll.
Confusing Chả giò with Other Rolls
Sometimes, people get a little confused about what nem or chả giò actually means, especially if they are new to Vietnamese food.
In Vietnam, people from the north and south might use the word nem differently. Northerners often use nem to talk about many kinds of rice paper rolls with meat, including gỏi cuốn (which Western restaurants often call "salad rolls"). Southerners, however, usually use nem more specifically for ground meat dishes like nem nướng (which is like a grilled pork sausage).
Outside of Vietnam, it can get even more confusing! The English name for chả giò can change from one restaurant menu to another. It's often mixed up with other dishes like egg rolls or salad rolls.
Because real chả giò made with rice paper can break easily when fried and only stays crispy for a few hours, some restaurants outside Vietnam use wheat flour wrappers instead of rice paper. This makes them more like Chinese egg rolls, which can make it hard to tell the difference.
There's also a special roll called Nem cua bể (crab spring roll). This dish is very famous in Hai Phong, a city in Vietnam. It's made with crab meat, mushrooms, carrots, and other vegetables. It's fried and served with vermicelli noodles and fresh vegetables, just like other chả giò!
Images for kids
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Chả giò (Vietnamese Spring Rolls) at World Heritage Cuisine Summit & Food Festival 2018
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See also
In Spanish: Chả giò para niños
