Vegan Spring Rolls in Vietnam

Vegan Spring Rolls are a pretty boring choice at home in England but not here in Vietnam. Oh no. Eat vegan spring rolls in Vietnam and you will never be satisfied with the boring frozen, then fried to beyond an inch of their life variety of vegan springs rolls ever again.

There are two sorts of vegan spring rolls in Vietnam (often served with meat or shrimp inside so unless you’re eating in a veggie restaurant, you’ll have to get veganizing!). The two varieties are fresh spring rolls and fried spring rolls (but believe us, the fried spring rolls here are nothing like you might get outside of Vietnam).

Our favourite fresh vegan spring rolls were packed full of fresh herbs, tofu, a thick soft rice noodle but them wrapped in a tasty leaf that had the texture of a nettle but the taste of a fresh green cabbage. We can only imagine that is is on the the many varieties of ‘cai’ (Vietnamese cabbage). They were wrapped up like little presents and served with a thick soy sauce dip that was spiced up with a bit of extra chilli.

A well made fresh spring roll is indeed a thing of beauty

Fresh vegan spring rolls are like eating the flavours of Vietnam wrapped up in a little present

It’s not just us that’s in love with the simple vegan spring roll; look at the lovely Miss Cam from An Nhu restaurant preparing for the day ahead, getting her spring rolls ready for her vegetarian restaurant.

Vegan spring roll preparation by a true (and very lovely) professional

Look at what goes inside… so fresh!

We could eat them all!

Fried vegan spring rolls, not to be outdone by their fresh counterparts, are also an experience not to be missed when in Vietnam. Served on their own, they’re pretty tasty; rice noodle wrappers make the outside crispy and light and fillings of taro or fresh bean-sprouts, onions and carrots all go nicely with whatever dipping sauce is around (usually soy or chilli).

Yum!

Fried vegan spring rolls are also served with ‘banh trang’ rice wrappers, a huge plate of salad leaves, slices of cucumber and pineapple. And what do you do when you get all this extra stuff? Why, you make another roll filled with the fried spring roll, the extra salad and then wrapped in the rice wrapper. So, like the Ban Xeo ‘pancake-in-a-pancake’ setup you can have a spring-roll-in-a-spring-roll. There is something very appealing about this concept to us.