Vietnamese Fresh Spring Rolls with Shrimp + Peanut Sauce

Wrapping up Vietnamese fresh spring rolls in rice paper is easier than you think! This easily customizable recipe is cool & refreshing – perfect for summer.

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I absolutely adore Vietnamese cuisine. Years ago when I was pregnant with my son, we would go to our favorite local Vietnamese restaurant so often that we basically lived there.

As far as cooking Vietnamese food at home, I haven’t done it a ton yet, but I really do love it.

Some of my favorite items at any Vietnamese restaurant are recipes made using rice paper wrappers.

Have you ever had them? They’re those translucent, tacky-to-the-touch sheets that wrap around food to contain it, almost like a burrito.

They’re sold in sheets that are dry and brittle, and you need to soak them in water to make them pliable.

They’re a little tricky to work with, but I promise you can catch on with just a little practice. Be sure to check out the demo I did of this recipe for more on that.

I most often find Vietnamese appetizer recipes that utilize rice paper wrappers. My favorites are summer rolls and fresh spring rolls (also sometimes called simply, “fresh rolls”).

There’s a lot of information online about the difference between spring rolls and summer rolls. For these particular rolls, I chose to call them Vietnamese Fresh Spring Rolls with Shrimp + Peanut Sauce because they have both veggies and shrimp inside of them. From what I’ve read, the translucent rolls don’t usually contain meat. So that’s where I landed.

This recipe is a combination of things that I have loved over the years. I first made a similar one at home back in 2014 when entertaining some friends on a hot summer day.

It was an easy appetizer to make, and it majorly impressed my friends! I mean, just look at those beautiful colors…

After making this recipe on Facebook LIVE this summer, I realized that a different order of assembly made these rolls look the most appealing. The photo above (from 2014), shows the way I used to do it – I’d put the shrimp down on the soaked rice paper first and top with the noodles.

What I realized is that if you put the colorful ingredients on top of the shrimp, they make a nice colorful backdrop for the shrimp and they “pop” more. Since the shrimp have white in them, they can sometimes get a bit lost if they have a big pile of white noodles behind them.

Because one of the best parts of this recipe is the fact that you can see the mixture of ingredients through the rice paper wrapper.

The other ingredient that’s a bit different to many US kitchens is the type of noodles used inside the spring rolls. You can use bean thread noodles (also called glass or cellophane noodles) or rice vermicelli, which is what I used here.

Whichever noodles you end up getting, just be sure to read the package directions for how to cook them properly. Some need to be covered in boiling water for a few minutes, some just need to soak for a bit. It varies a bit from brand to brand, but they’re all pretty quick-cooking.

Either way, after they’re cooked, rinsed in cold water, and drained, they get tossed with seasoned rice vinegar. This adds a nice tangy flavor that goes really well with all of the fresh produce that gets wrapped up in the rice paper wrappers.

Once your ingredients are all prepped, assembly happens pretty quickly. You can totally prep your filling ingredients ahead of time and keep them in the fridge until you’re ready. I like laying out all of my ingredients on a quarter sheet pan or platter so I can just grab from each pile as I go, making sure to add a bit of each ingredient to my spring roll wrappers.

If you’re looking for a few more shortcuts, feel free to buy already shredded lettuce, cabbage, and carrots. You could even swap that out for a packaged coleslaw mix, which usually has a few types of cabbage and carrots in it already. Purple cabbage would be really pretty in here, too.

Feel free to mix and match ingredients that you have on hand, or that you enjoy raw. If you aren’t into shrimp you could use chilled meat that’s already cooked and shredded, like chicken or beef. Tofu would be nice here as well.

These spring rolls are a bit of a revamped version of Vietnamese Fresh Spring Rolls and some Vegetable Summer Rolls that I made with my friend Betsy back in 2011. It brings my favorite parts of both recipes into one, and my family really, really loves them.

I typically serve these rolls with a sorta-spicy peanut dipping sauce. If it’s too spicy for you, feel free to reduce or omit the red pepper flakes. And if you’re looking for an additional sauce (or just a different sauce), a simple fish sauce mixture is in the recipe notes below.

If you make these in advance and want to store them, you’ll need to keep a few things in mind to keep them from sticking to each other. The rice paper wrappers are really sticky!

I like to dampen a kitchen towel with cold water (I tend to use unpaper towels for this) but you could also use paper towels and wring it out. I set the spring rolls onto the damp towels and make sure they aren’t touching. You can pinch the towel up in between the rolls to ensure they don’t stick together.

If you have a deep container you can do multiple layers, just place another damp towel on top of the bottom layer before adding more.

Pop a lid on the container and store in the fridge until you’re ready to dig in! I find that these last well for about 2 days. I don’t like keeping seafood for much longer than that personally, but feel free to use your own discretion here.

If you find yourself with leftover filling ingredients and no more rice paper wrappers you can serve this as a big salad, drizzled with the peanut sauce. It’s very tasty and you don’t have to bother wrapping and rolling!

Looking for more shrimp recipes? Check out some of our favorites:

• Vietnamese Fresh Spring Rolls with Shrimp + Peanut Sauce
• Killer Shrimp Cocktail
• Big Shrimpin’ Bacon-Wrapped Shrimp and Grit Cakes
• Spicy Shrimp + Napa Cabbage Stir-Fry
• Shrimp with Coconut Curry Sweet Potato Noodles
• Smoky Shrimp with Charred Corn Salsa
• Tequila-Lime Shrimp Tacos
• Thai Shrimp “Alfredo”
• Smoky Shrimp Salad with Green Goddess Dressing
• Argentinean Red Shrimp a la Chesapeake Bay
• Shrimp and Vegetable Fried Rice
• Fire Roasted Tomato and Black Bean Shrimp with Lime-Scented Quinoa
• Apricot Soy Chili Glazed Shrimp with Quinoa

Doing some online shopping? Check out my Amazon Shop page for recommendations!

Recipe for Vietnamese Fresh Spring Rolls with Shrimp + Peanut Sauce

If you try out this recipe, please come back and give it a star rating and comment below. I’d love to know what you think of it!

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