Spring Roll Vs Egg Roll- What’s The Difference you ask. They both have the same origin story. They both have the same look. Some would even swear that both of them taste equally delicious. Nothing can beat the experience of dipping the spring roll or the egg roll into a choicest dip or sauce and chomping on the delectable appetizer taking in all the festival of flavors and tastes just exploding inside your mouth. However, we would like to share with you the primary difference between Egg Roll and Spring roll.
What happens when we visit the restaurant is that we are inundated with too many options. And this tends to put us in a quandary. And on most occasions, we end up being confused. We aren’t sure what to choose. Should we try out the spring roll recipe or should we risk the egg roll calories, we wonder, often at our wits end!
It’s a usual tussle between our heart and brain and we are forever confused. “Spring Roll Vs Egg Roll – What’s the difference?”, many of us wonder but rarely set out to find the answer. In this article, we will give you the brass tacks.
Table of Contents
Spring Roll Vs Egg Roll – The History
The history of both these famous food items is pretty foggy. As we journeyed into finding out Spring Roll Vs Egg Roll – What’s the difference? All we know is that they have their origins in the hugely popular Chinese culture and cuisine.
“What came first?”, you may ask. Did they perfect the easy egg roll recipe first? Or was it a spring roll? Experts tend to believe that it was the latter that was invented first. Yes, dear reader, the spring roll is said to have been created first followed by the egg roll.
But hold on, we also found that the egg roll could be the result of an intricate union between Chinese and American culture.
Spring Roll Vs Egg Roll – What’s The Difference?
If you look closely at both the popular appetizers, you will discover that one of the most important differences between Egg Roll and Spring roll begins with the way they look. The surface of the Egg roll will often appear to have bubbles all around. While the Spring roll has a smooth exterior even though both are fried.
Depending on whether you like your appetizer to be crispy or crunchy, you will go for the Spring roll or the Egg roll respectively. Yes, you heard that right. The Egg roll is often Crunchy and when you bite into one, it offers you a chewy delightful experience. We believe we have begun well discussing Spring Roll Vs Egg Roll – What’s the difference?
With the Spring Roll what you get is a flaky and crispy appetizer that will disintegrate in your mouth as you take a huge bite of it.
Now before your mouth starts watering, let us go into the technical details a little. If you were to scientifically approach the question of “Spring Roll Vs Egg Roll – What’s the difference?” we would be analyzing 3 essential elements namely:
- Ingredients
- Preparation
- Appearance
Let’s detail out all the three here. That will help you get a better understanding of the difference between Egg Roll and Spring roll. We believe once you are done with our article you might even give the restaurant delicacies a sharp miss, instead deciding to whip up both the spring roll and the egg roll at home with the choicest of ingredients. Guess the whole Spring Roll Vs Egg Roll – What’s the difference? did really add some value to our lives after all.
What Is A Spring Roll?
A spring roll is essentially a thin wrapper made out of wheat flour or rice flour with ingredients that range from vegetables to fish to meat.
Spring Roll Recipe
The spring roll recipe can be twisted as per your need and mood to include any type of filling and you would never go wrong with it. Some say the etymology of the word “spring roll” comes from the original appetizers that were made and served during the New Year banquets in China which would also signal the beginning of the spring season.
The spring roll recipe has changed over the years and much like humankind, the spring roll has also undergone an evolution of sorts. What began as a thin crispy pancake rolled around spring vegetables has metamorphosed into a thin wrapper made out of flour dough, either having a rice base or a wheat base.
What is a spring roll? You may ask and you will be surprised to know that there is no single correct answer. Herein lies another answer to the “Spring Roll Vs Egg Roll – What’s the difference?” debate. There are so many innovations perfected on the humble spring roll over the years that you will be astounded to see the variations that can be made in the spring roll recipe.
Serving Spring Roll
Spring roll can be served in two forms – fried and non-fried variants. You will come across fried, baked, and even steamed varieties of spring roll and it will all taste awesome. The typical ingredients that are used in the spring roll can include some of the following:
- Vegetables
- Rice noodles
- Carrots
- Shrimp
- Pork
- Fruits
- Pork or Beef
Depending on which part of Asia you look at, there will be a spring roll type that is most popular across that country. So, let’s now deep dive into what are the various region-specific spring rolls that you will come across.
Variations In Spring Rolls
Spring Roll Vs Egg Roll – What’s the difference? The discussion will take a backseat here as we figure out the difference in the various kinds of spring rolls available across the Asian sub-continent.
In Vietnam, the spring roll is called summer rolls. It comes in an interesting dried rice wrapper that needs a dip in warm water to make it moldable and sticky for various ingredients.
In Thailand too, the preference is for rice wrappers over wheat. In both Vietnam and Thailand, the rolls are served cold, often chilled with a dipping sauce that contributes to the overall richness of the delicacy. The sauce is usually either a peanut sauce or a sweet and tangy fish-based sauce.
When we come to the Philippines, the spring roll is rechristened as lumpia which is nothing but a deep-fried spring roll made of an extremely thin wrapper. The chief ingredients in them are cabbage and carrot coupled with pork. However, the Philippines also experimented with seafood in certain lumpia.
Malaysia and Taiwan call it the popiah. Here the difference is often found in the making of the spring roll. In both countries, there is a preference for wheat flour wrappers. The Taiwanese delicacy reminds one of the burritos while the Malaysian spring roll often resembles a crepe with stuffing such as lettuce, sauce or dip, and other seasoned fillings overflowing for a rich savory bite.
The spring roll also goes sweet in a couple of forms. For example, in the Philippines, it is called Turon where a deep-fried spring roll sees a filling made of jackfruit or saba banana and augmented with caramel drizzle to complete the delicacy.
Let’s now come back to our original Spring Roll Vs Egg Roll – What’s the difference? question.
What Is An Egg Roll?
Now that we have understood one part of Spring Roll Vs Egg Roll – What’s the difference? the question, let’s go through the other half. So, what exactly is the egg roll?
Where spring roll has a Chinese history and has been there for centuries, the Egg roll has been an American variant of the spring roll. It is not as if someone set out to create a spring roll with an egg filling and ended up with an easy egg roll recipe.
You might be wondering as to why an egg roll is called that. Well, there are two potential explanations for that. It will also contribute to our “thesis” on Spring Roll Vs Egg Roll – What’s the difference?
Egg rolls typically have eggs either in the wrapper along with flour and water or as part of the filling. You will always have the egg roll as a fried delicacy with the wrapper being thick and crunchy. The presence of egg in the dough gives it a robust exterior.
Talking about the ingredients that contribute to the often-highlighted egg roll calories, an egg roll recipe typically includes cooked cabbage or shredded pork, or other cooked vegetables. One of the reasons for filling the egg roll with cooked stuffing is for the inside and the outside to complement each other effortlessly.
The biggest contributor to Spring Roll Vs Egg Roll – What’s the difference? debate is the origin story and the available variants in easy egg roll recipes. You will find numerous variations of the egg roll as you travel across the United States of America. The usual recipes of the egg roll are fried in a wok and develop a light golden-brown color. They are easily distinguishable by their thick crunchier wrapper often because they are dipped in an egg for a richer taste.
The Most Popular Ingredients In An Egg Roll
There are known cases of people using coleslaw mix to fill the egg wrapper for a quick fix for their hunger pangs. But the usual ingredients that one will find inside an egg roll will include some of the following:
- Cooked cabbage
- Black beans
- Corn and rice
- Ground beef or pork
- Cheese and eggs
- Tofu
And with our discussion on the ingredients, we have discovered another point for our Spring Roll Vs Egg Roll – What’s the difference? discussion.
But our research has also thrown up certain interesting facts about the egg roll. The egg roll recipes these days often avoid the usage of eggs but are still called egg rolls.
The Versatile Egg Rolls
Another interesting discovery we made was the tremendous amount of innovation that can be done with the egg roll playing a prominent part in each of them.
You can look at the egg roll as a breakfast item where you bring together the amazing combination of cheese-infused scrambled egg with bacon and boiled potato.
The egg roll can also be coupled with avocado to create a fantastic dish that will serve your need for a lime-flavored food item that can be a substitute for toast.
Baked tofu and vegetable egg roll is another interesting item worth testing because it has that healthy turn many of us crave and can do with even second and third helpings to satiate our taste buds.
Want to eat the egg roll in a dessert format, try out the Apple Pie Egg roll which plays on both the sweet and savory palates of an aficionado.
Lastly enjoy the egg roll soup, which has the crispy, crunchy appetizer in its most innovative avatar. Only instead of the veggie filling is on the inside, you will find the crispy wrapper strips floating in the broth alongside well-cooked vegetables like carrot, cabbage, and even ground pork.
No discussion on Spring Roll Vs Egg Roll – What’s the difference? can end without discussing the dips and sauces to go along with the tasty appetizers.
You can have three different types of sauces:
- Sweet Sauces usually include either plum sauce, peanut sauce, duck sauce, or even sweet and sour sauce. They are popular accomplices to both spring rolls and egg rolls. Of course, they can contribute to the egg roll calories too if not consumed in moderation.
- Spicy Sauces might include hot mustard and sriracha which supply the additional spices to both egg rolls as well as spring roll recipes.
- Savory Sauce might be either soy sauce or Worcestershire sauce or even the flavorsome Vietnamese fish sauce.
Conclusion
With this, we hope we have managed to help you clear your doubts regarding Spring Roll Vs Egg Roll – What’s the difference? Now go dig up your special recipe of either a spring roll or the egg roll and make new journeys to discovering all your hidden appetizer taste buds.
