Egg rolls. They’re the quintessential Chinese takeout food. This egg roll recipe is a copycat of the basic version you’ll find in takeout places and Chinese buffets, with cabbage and roast pork in the filling.
It’s been a very long time since I was regularly making them in my parents’ takeout restaurant, when we’d crank out hundreds of egg rolls at a time. With this recipe, however, we’ve recorded the ingredients and method we used, so we can make them anytime at home!
Note: This recipe was originally published on November 10, 2014. We have since updated it with new photos, clearer instructions, nutrition information, and more. Enjoy!
What Are Egg Rolls?
Egg rolls are fried, savory rolls, generally filled with cabbage chopped Chinese roast pork. The wheat flour based wrappers form small bubbles when fried, giving them their signature look.
It is an American creation that evolved from Chinese spring rolls (check out our Shanghai Style Spring Roll recipe to see the difference), sometime in the early 20th Century.
Contrary to the name, the filling does not actually contain egg, and there may or may not be eggs in the wrapper! Like other fried foods, they’re often served with duck sauce, a sweet condiment popular in Chinese-American takeout restaurants.
A Restaurant Recipe
I first attempted to make these beside my father, who was a Chinese chef working at the Holiday Inn restaurant in upstate New York. He later became a business owner with his own Chinese restaurant.
Back then, chefs and kitchen hands were judged by how many pounds of egg roll wrappers they could go through in one hour. If you were any good, you could tear through 25-30 pounds of wrappers per hour, and all the egg rolls would look like perfect little clones of each other.
I wasn’t particularly good at it (25 pounds an hour was a far off dream), but I could make them well enough. It’s a relatively easy process, and you’ll get the hang of it quickly.
While my father is no longer here to give us his exact recipe, I’ve developed this one from memory. It’s very close to what we used to make at the restaurant.
Adapting & Storing
That said, you could use the traditional ingredients in this recipe, or get creative with just about any fresh vegetables and meat.
Just make a good-sized batch. They freeze well after frying, and reheat nicely for after school or party snacks. You can even cut the wrappers into smaller squares, and make minis for a delightful appetizer. Need I say more?
Egg Roll Recipe Instructions
Making the filling:
Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Put the savoy cabbage, green cabbage, carrots, and celery into the boiling water and cook for about 2 minutes. Transfer the veggies to an ice bath and drain.
Thoroughly squeeze out all the excess water from the vegetables (you can put the drained veggies in a clean kitchen towel and squeeze out the water). This is a very important step. If the filling is too wet, you will have a wet filling and soggy egg rolls!
A Chinese bamboo strainer/spider really comes in handy for scooping veggies out of the boiling water and even for frying the egg rolls if you are making a large batch. Check out our Chinese Cooking tools page to see what we use in our kitchen.
Once dry, transfer the veggies to a large mixing bowl. Add the scallions, salt, sugar, sesame oil, 2 tablespoons oil, five spice powder (if using), white pepper, Chinese roast pork, and cooked shrimp (if using). Toss everything together.
NOTE: One of our readers reported that his egg rolls were bland. We all have different taste preferences, and varying methods of measurement when it comes to portioning out ingredients. It’s a good idea to try the filling at this point and adjust the seasoning to taste.
As a general rule, the filling will taste a little bit more salty at this point, until it has a chance to absorb the seasonings. Remember though, you can add seasoning when you eat the egg rolls, but if they’re too salty, there is little that can be done to save the batch. Keep this in mind when re-seasoning.
You may also want to wrap a test egg roll and fry it to check the taste before you wrap the entire lot. We always did this at the restaurant before we made a batch of 600!
Okay, the filling is ready to be wrapped!
Back in the day, the egg roll wrappers at the restaurant used to come in 5-pound bundles. Each person would start with one and work their way down the stack, which made about 120 egg rolls.
We were pretty expert at making sure we had enough filling so that there’d be no leftover wrappers. It’s not an exact science, so play it by ear.
Wrapping the egg rolls:
The way to wrap these egg rolls is to first take a small fistful of filling, squeeze it a little in your hand until it is compressed together, and place it on the wrapper.
Check out the photos below to see how to wrap them. Basically, it’s similar to the method you’d use to wrap a burrito. Just add a thin layer of egg to make sure it stays sealed. Line them up on a lightly floured surface, and continue assembling until you run out of ingredients.
You can also watch the video on this page, demonstrating the folding technique or check our article on How to Fold Egg Rolls.
Check out our Chinese Noodles and wrappers page to see more on egg roll and spring roll wrappers, as well as all kinds of noodles.
Frying the egg rolls:
In a small pot, heat the oil to 325 degrees. You don’t need too much—just enough to submerge the egg rolls.
Carefully place a couple egg rolls into the oil, and fry them for about 5 minutes until golden brown. Keep them moving in the oil to make sure they fry evenly.
My father used to tell me that frying egg rolls was a fool-proof task. You just slide them gently into the oil, and keep them moving while they are frying. When they’re done, they’ll “call” you with a slightly louder sizzling noise.
That splattering noise is signaling that the filling is getting hot inside. The steam is escaping, causing the oil to bubble up.
You can serve them after they’ve cooled a bit, either by themselves, or with a little duck sauce, Chinese hot mustard, or hot sauce.
Freeze leftovers in freezer bags and reheat them in the oven. Enjoy folks!
Copycat Takeout Egg Rolls
Ingredients
- 8 cups savoy cabbage (shredded)
- 8 cups green cabbage (shredded)
- 2 cups carrot (shredded)
- 2 cups celery (shredded)
- 3 scallions (chopped)
- 2 1/2 teaspoons salt
- 2 teaspoons sugar
- 1 tablespoon sesame oil
- 2 tablespoons peanut or vegetable oil (plus more, for frying)
- 1/4 teaspoon five spice powder (optional)
- 1/4 teaspoon white pepper
- 3 cups roast pork (char siu, shredded or diced)
- 2 cups cooked shrimp (chopped, optional)
- 1 package egg roll wrappers (about 24 pieces)
- 1 egg (beaten)
Instructions
- Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Put the cabbage, carrots, and celery into the boiling water and cook for about 2 minutes. Transfer the veggies to an ice bath and drain. Thoroughly squeeze out all the excess water from the vegetables (you can put the drained veggies in a clean kitchen towel and squeeze out the water). This is a very important step because if the filling is too wet, you will have a wet filling and soggy egg rolls!
- Once dry, transfer the veggies to a large mixing bowl. Add the scallions, salt, sugar, sesame oil, 2 tablespoons oil, five spice powder (if using), white pepper, roast pork, and cooked shrimp (if using). Toss everything together. The filling is ready to be wrapped!
- To wrap the egg rolls, take a small fistful of filling, squeeze it a little in your hand until it is compressed together, and place it on the wrapper. The wrapping method is similar to that of a burrito. Just add a thin layer of egg to make sure it stays sealed. Line them up on a lightly floured surface, and continue assembling until you run out of ingredients.
- In a small pot, heat oil to 325 degrees. You don't need too much—just enough to submerge the egg rolls. Carefully place a couple egg rolls into the oil, and fry them for about 5 minutes until golden brown. Keep them moving in the oil to make sure they fry evenly.
- Cool slightly and serve! Freeze leftovers in freezer bags and reheat them in the oven at 350 degrees, until crispy.
I have been reading lots of recipes trying to replicate the egg rolls I grew up with. These are amazing…I found steaming the vegetables allows
Me to skip the drying, but makes a less densely wrapped filling… and when I switched out black for the white pepper they were zingier and just like the ones I got in Pennsylvania as a kid. Thank you! Loved the family history that went with the recipe.
That’s amazing! So glad you’ve found the recipe you’ve bean searching for :-)
Ok
So to be clear on the recipe…
1 head of Savoy cabbage
1 head of cabbage
? How many carrots
How many shallots?
I’m just having a hard time reading this recipe and I want to make it really bad
I just need it specifically spelled out for me 🤦♂️
Hi Blake, the measurements are in cups; each cup is about 235ml. I say if you will be ok to get 1 head each of the cabbages. A small bag of carrots and there are no shallots in the ingredient list :-)
You have a beautiful family, and your rgg rolls are excellent.
Thank you so much, Steve :-)
Not very useful without weight measurements. ¿How the hell much is 8 cups of cabbage?
8 cups of cabbage (before washing) is about 1.5 pounds or 750g.
These were absolutely wonderful. I had some left over filling and made some egg roll fried rice with it. I used the same ingredients I used a bit of light soy sauce, dark soy sauce and a of sugar to add toward the end, and of course a scrambled egg. It made a lovely meal for 1. Any suggestions on how to make it even better next time
Hi Liz, I do like the concept of egg roll fried rice – good idea for using the leftover filling!
Best egg rolls I’ve ever made. Thank you!!
You’re welcome barbara, enjoy!
Would it be advised to make the filling ahead at all? Just a day, so after work all that’s needed is wrapping and frying. Squeezing out the excess water of course
Hi Amy, that should be fine to make the filling ahead and store it in the refrigerator overnight.
This worked perfect! If anyone else does this it’s good to do an extra squeeze to get that sneaky water out. Thank you so much for the recipe. I’m making it again for Father’s Day but meat free as my husband doesn’t eat meat. I used a water and chickpea wash instead of egg. Still amazing!
How wonderful, Amy. It’s nice that you made it vegetarian :-)
I bought all the ingredients for this egg roll recipe when I realized I couldn’t find egg roll wrapper! I did get spring roll wrapper. I’ve made the other spring rolls recipe before so wanted to try this one. Do you think I can make this egg roll filling and wrap it in spring roll? Should be ok right?!
Hi Stephanie, yes, this egg roll filling should work using spring roll wrappers ;-)
About how many heads of cabbage do you recon the 8 cups took?
Hi TantoB, a medium-sized cabbage should give you more than enough for 8 cups of shredded cabbage.
Can you plze tell me how you make spring rolls
Hi Cynthia, we have a couple of our family favorite spring rolls: Shanghai Spring Rolls and Cantonese Spring Rolls.