History of Vietnam Rice Paper Spring Roll

Besides pho and banh mi, another iconic Vietnamese dish is gỏi cuốn or Vietnam spring roll. Okay, there is also Vietnamese coffee 😄

Gỏi cuốn is literally "salad roll" but is conventionally called "spring roll".

CNN named goi cuon one of "The World's Best 50 Food" referring to them as "summer roll".

Vietnamese goi cuon is a form of spring roll which originates from China. It is so named as it is a roll wrapped with seasonal spring vegetables, literally springtime roll 春卷. Except for vegetarian versions, spring rolls have protein such as shrimp, chicken, pork or beef. Vietnamese rice paper rolls also have rice vermicelli.

Vietnamese spring roll is eaten with a dip usually savoury with fish sauce or soy sauce as the base. Whereas Chinese spring roll wraps are made with wheat flour, the Vietnamese make theirs with rice flour. Chinese spring rolls are often deep fried. The Vietnamese have another name for deep fried spring roll known as chả giò, or nem rán.

The key to good Vietnamese spring roll is freshness - everything from the wrap to the ingredients and dip have to be prepared a la minute.

Vietnamese spring roll requires minimal cooking but quite a bit of preparation. The fresh seasonal vegetables are washed and cut - they can be lettuce, basil, bean sprout, mint (my favourite), cilantro, etc. The dried rice vermicelli is rehydrated and dripped dry. Sometimes glass (mung bean) noodles are used. Protein are cut and diced - they can be blanched shrimp, diced ham, sliced roast beef, grilled pork, etc.

Vietnamese spring roll is a versatile and adaptable dish, so inside the rice paper wrap, modern renditions have foie gras, faux truffle 🙄 , anything goes as long as there are people who enjoy it. For me, innovation is good as long as the spirit and essence of the dish remain.

The dried rice paper is hydrated by dipping briefly in water. The wet rice paper soft, supple, springy, stretchy is used to wrap the ingredients into a roll.

The rice paper roll is eaten with a savoury sauce. There are many variations such as nutty, spicy, tangy blends but traditionally the sauces are fish sauce or soy sauce based.

The Koreans adopted and adapted the dish from Vietnam and call it wollamssam  고이 꾸온 which means Vietnam wrap.

Most rice paper (bánh tráng in Vietnamese) we buy in supermarkets are machine made (and affordable). 

Making rice paper the traditional way in Vietnam is a disappearing art. Rice solution is spread thinly on a sheet of cotton cloth stretched taut over a pot of boiling water. The rice solution is cooked by steaming. The sheet of cooked rice paper is picked up by a bamboo wand. It is then laid on bamboo mats to cool and dry. The dried rice sheets are stored for future use.

There are regional variations in the rice paper. In the north of Vietnam, rice paper is thinner and made purely with rice, whereas in the south, tapioca is sometimes added and the paper is thicker.

Vietnamese rice roll reminds me of chee cheong fun 豬腸粉 or Cantonese rice rolls from China's Guangdong province.

Both are made of rice solution, spread on stretched cloth, cooked by steaming and wraps food into rolls before eating. Only difference is chee cheong fun is eaten freshly cooked and steaming hot.

So, we can reverse engineer chee cheong fun by wrapping ingredients (e.g. shrimp) in rehydrated Vietnamese rice paper and then steam it before serving 🤔  Idea heh?

According to legend, Vietnamese rice roll was invented by emperor Nguyễn Huệ Quang Trung (1753 - 1792). He is famous for quick marching his troops by using hammocks i.e. two soldiers carry a third who was resting in the hammock. The soldiers took turns to rest in the hammock and the whole army marched very quickly without needing rest stops.

Emperor Nguyễn Huệ Quang Trung is said to invent dried rice paper and Vietnamese rice rolls. The soldiers were able to eat without needing to set fires to cook. This allowed the soldiers to have a filling, complete meal (with carbs, protein & greens) without making any smoke, so preventing the enemy from finding out their positions.

Earlier in Ming dynasty China, another military hero, general Qi Ji Guang 戚繼光 (1528 - 1588) had a similar but different idea.

He spotted an old lady made squares of rice sheets by spreading and cooking rice solution on a large flat griddle. The dried rice squares were then stored for future use. Before eating these rice squares, they were rehydrated by blanching in hot water.

General Qi Ji Guang fed his soldiers with these rehydrated rice sheets during the campaign against Japanese marauders pillaging China's Fujian province. This was the predecessor of the kway in today's popular kway chap dish.

The Japanese also have a rice paper wrap known as oblaat オブラート or 糯米纸 in Chinese. But, it's quite different from Vietnamese rice paper and not a roll.

Oblaat was brought to Japan by the Dutch during 19th century to wrap medicine so that it can be swallowed without tasting the bitter powder i.e. the precursor of today's pill capsules. Oblaat was later used to wrap candy to keep them from sticking together. My best memory of it is the translucent wrapper around rabbit candy.

Written by Tony Boey on 10 Jun 2023

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