Vegan Recipe: Chinese Five Spice Spring Rolls

Vegan Five Spice Spring Rolls

Chinese Five Spice is easily one of my favourite seasonings and I've always been a big fan of spring rolls, so when I came across Nigel Slater's recipe for Five-Spiced Pork Buns in his Real Fast Food book, I couldn't resist putting a vegan spring roll spin on it. And since I'm looking at Granose's Meat Free Lincolnshire Sausages for my Meet Your Meat Substitutes series, it seemed like a great opportunity to put the mix to the test.

The sausage mix is highly absorbent with a neutral flavouring making it perfect for Nigel's rich seasoning and really easy to work with as spring roll filling.

On this occasion I munched the spring rolls as my dinner with a nice side of Kung Fu Collard Greens, but I'm confident that these would also make an amazing wow factor vegan dinner party canape or starter.

Vegan Chinese Five Spice Spring Rolls Recipe

1 sachet of Granose Meat Free Lincolnshire Sausage Mix
143 ml water
2 cloves of garlic
2 tablespoons of dark soy sauce
2 tablespoons of lemon juice
2 teaspoons of five spice powder
2 tablespoons of runny honey
fresh black pepper
10 - 15 rice paper spring roll shells
2-3 cups of water
1 cup of bean sprouts (This could easily work with cooked carrots or cabbage or both as well)
Vegetable oil for frying

1. Pour the sausage mix into a bowl, add 143ml of water and let stand for 10 mins.
2. In the mean time, finely chop your garlic add to the mix with soy sauce, lemon juice, fives spice powder, honey and a pinch of pepper. Mix until all the flavours are evenly distributed.
3. Saute the bean sprouts until they're soft and then add into to mixture.
4. Grab a tray and fill it with just enough water to submerge one rice paper sheet at a time. Place one sheet in the water until it's fully wet, about 5 seconds, then place on to clean flat surface for filling. Scoop out one tablespoon of filling and lay left of centre in a short line. Now fold your spring rolls like a...spring roll or a tiny burrito. Wet the corners to seal.
5. Deep fry spring rolls in oil (don't use Olive Oil - it makes everything extremely oily) until brown.
6. Remove and place on a towel or rack while you cook the rest.
7. Repeat until you've got about a dozen rolls.