Garlic Chicken Spring Rolls
These chicken spring rolls are light, flavorful and fantastic. Loaded with fresh vegetables and a light rice paper wrapper, these chicken summer rolls or salad rolls are a great healthy meal.
Update: here’s our latest tutorial on how to make and roll spring rolls that will help you roll these garlic chicken spring rolls.
Chicken Spring Rolls : Fresh & Healthy
I know I’m not the only one who has gone through this, so I thought I’d finally say it publicly after years of food blogging. Food blogging made me chunky-er, pleasantly plump or what ever you want to call it. My jeans didn’t zip anymore. My love of blogging has pretty much changed my life, my obsession with food and everything related. But if I wanted to continue doing this and still stay healthy, I knew I had to make a lifestyle change again. Eating these healthy chicken summer rolls along with regular exercise was the answer.
Difference Between Spring Rolls, vs. Summer Rolls?
These words terms to describe these healthy and delicious rice paper rolls are used interchangeably. They are all pretty much describing the same dish. Often times the deep fried crispy rolls are called spring rolls as well so it can be often confusing. But we’ve always used the term fresh spring rolls to differentiate from crispy spring rolls. Summer Rolls are the same as these fresh spring rolls. Rice paper salad wraps are often used as well so there’s another term to remember!
Why We Eat Low Carb Spring Rolls
How To To keep my mental spirits happy and my body in check? I started to eat more fresh spring rolls. Fresh vegetables, light proteins and fresh herbs rolled in a rice paper is like a salad in a roll. It kept my meals interesting, versatile and most importantly, spring rolls kept my mental state happy.
I am, after all, Vietnamese and spring rolls are a comfort food that always satisfies. This garlic chicken spring roll is one of the many that I munched on for lunch and dinner. After a few weeks dedicated to the gym, weekly meals of garlic chicken spring rolls and taking care of my body again, I started to shed some pounds. The best news of all this is that my jeans are finally start to zip all the way up again. Yes!! Hope you enjoy these garlic chicken Summer rolls just as much as I do!
a healthier me,
diane
How to Roll Chicken Spring Rolls with Rice Paper
Here’s our helpful photo tutorial on How To Roll Spring rolls and All Our Great Spring Rolls Recipes
Here’s a Few of our Favorite Spring Roll Ingredients and Tools:
It can sometimes be hard to find good spring roll ingredients and tools. Here’s some of the favorites:
Rice Paper Wrapper Water Bowl – The perfect bowl for dipping the rice paper at the table. These have been life changers when it comes to our spring roll parties. Easy for everyone to dip and takes up so much less table space.
Here’s my personal recipe for Vietnamese Fish Sauce Dip and click here for all our popular Vietnamese Recipes that are sometimes traditional and definitely sometimes not.
Garlic Chicken Spring Rolls Recipe
Ingredients
- 2 pounds (907 g) boneless chicken , we prefer thighs but use what you like
- 2 Tablespoons (30 ml) grape seed oil or vegetable oil
- 4 cloves garlic , minced
- 2 teaspoons (10 ml) sesame oil
- 1 Tablespoon (15 ml) fish sauce or soy sauce (use Tamari for gluten free)
- 1 bunch fresh basil , mint or other herbs
- 1 head fresh lettuce , chopped or torn in small pieces
- carrots, celery, cucumbers, daikon radish or bell peppers , optional – use what you like
- 12 rice paper
For Garlic Soy dip:
- 3 Tablespoons (60 ml) soy sauce (use Tamari for gluten free)
- 1 clove garlic , minced
- 1 Tablespoon (15 ml) lime juice
- 1/4 teaspoon sugar
- 1/4 teaspoon sesame oil
Instructions
- For the Chicken: In a large bowl, combine chicken, vegetable oil, sesame oil, garlic and fish sauce or soy sauce. Cover well and allow to marinade for about 20 minutes.
- Heat frying pan on medium high heat. Cook the chicken until it’s cooked through and a nice crust is formed. Slice in chicken in thin slices, about 1/4 inches for rolling.
- Gather vegetables, rice paper, board surface to roll on and bowl of hot water.
- For the Dip: combine all ingredients well.
For Rolls:
- In large bowl, fill it with water and make it warm by adding hot water. Gently dip each rice paper wrapper in warm water for a few seconds till damp. Don’t over soak the rice paper. Place rice paper on plate, or working surface. As rice paper begins to absorb the water and become more soft and pliable (about 5 seconds, depending on wrappers and water temp.), begin to add the fillings.
- On the 1/3 section of the rice paper wrapper closest to you, start layering your fillings of lettuce, herbs, chicken and vegetables.
- Start rolling the wrapper over the fillings away from you, tucking and rolling the wrapper with your fingers, making sure all the fillings remain right and round within the rice paper wrapper.
- Serve immediately with soy dip, or cover with plastic wrap to eat a few hours later.
Nutrition Information per Serving
More Spring Roll & Vietnamese Recipes:
- How to Make and Roll Fresh Rice Paper Spring Rolls
- Turkey Avocado Spring Rolls
- Crispy Chicken Vegetable Egg Rolls (crispy spring rolls)
- Fresh Vietnamese spring rolls with shrimp and/or pork
- This recipe was originally published in 2011.
The garlic chicken was absolutely amazing. So flavorful. They were perfect with the spring rolls. I’m in love.
I love how honest you are without being harsh on yourself! I find it helpful to remember that most people don’t feel their best when eating heaps of sweet stuff, so if you feel you could do with less of that, sharing recipes for lighter, more vege-based stuff might actually work really well for your readers too. Hope it’s working out well now 🙂
I was curious if you could marinate the chicken overnight? Thanks!
Stakra- I don’t know about marinating the chicken thighs overnight for this recipe. I used to marinate chicken overnight and the chicken would become pasty the next day.
hi! can you tell me how to make the pickled carrots? is it just vinegar added to them…or more? thx!
They are quick to make. Here’s our recipe for them: Pickled Carrots & Daikon
HOw do you make pickled carrot and daikon radishes?? Sounds delish on ANY salad!
Here’s our recipe for them. They are quick and easy to make, and you are correct, they go great on just about any salad or sandwich.