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Delicious dipping sauce for spring rolls

June 19th, 2012 at 01:18 am

I finally cracked the code! We used to get this amazing sauce with tofu spring rolls at a local Vietnamese restaurant, but it closed down about 5 years ago. Since then, I've been making a pale imitation of the sauce, based on what the waitress told me once when I begged her for the secret. All she told me were the ingredients: Coke, Sprite, peanut butter, hoisin sauce, soy sauce and chili sauce.

Most dipping sauce recipes just involve combining the ingredients cold, so that's what I do. It tasted pretty close, but it was difficult to get the nice thick consistency without adding more peanut butter than I wanted.

Recently it occurred to me to try cooking it to thicken it. Tonight's the first time I tried it, and I nailed it! So here it is, the yummiest spring roll dipping sauce I've ever had. Makes enough for probably 12 spring rolls.

INGREDIENTS:
1/4 c Coke
1/4 c Sprite
1/4 c unsweetened peanut butter
1/4 c hoisin sauce
1/8 c soy sauce
Sri Racha sauce to taste (I added about 1/2 t)

DIRECTIONS:
Pour Coke and Sprite into a small saucepan and heat on med-high while you measure the other ingredients into the pan. Use a fork to break down the peanut butter and blend it all together. When it's boiling, reduce heat and simmer about 5 minutes or until it reaches a nice consistency (like gravy or apple butter). It'll thicken a tad more when it cools, but not much.

I serve these with tofu spring rolls. Ideally (when I have time to make them my favorite way), this consists of:

- Tofu, pressed, cut into pieces, fried in peanut oil until slightly crispy, and drained & cooled on paper towels (slightly warm is nice)
- Lettuce, shredded into strips
- Rice vermicelli, cooked & cooled (keep in cold water until you're ready to use it, so it doesn't get clumpy, then drain when ready to assemble the rolls)
- Several stalks of cilantro
- Spring roll wrappers

Pour very hot (not boiling; you need to be able to touch it with bare hands) water into a pie plate. Take one wrapper and dip into water, rotating it in your hands and dipping until it's all wet. (It will soften as you put the ingredients on it.) Put on clean surface, place tofu in a row (leaving room to fold down the top and bottom like a burrito), add small clump of rice noodles, small handful of lettuce, and lay 2-3 strips of cilantro on top. (The leafy tops can stick out for a nice visual.) Then roll up, and serve as soon as possible so the wrappers are still nice and haven't started to harden.

The sauce would be good with other things too! It's awesome!

1 Responses to “Delicious dipping sauce for spring rolls”

  1. Shiela Says:
    1340069219

    oh sounds good. I normally just use sugar but it's never the same as what you get at a Vietnamese restaurant.
    I actually had this for lunch yesterday I put in leftover quinoa, ratatouille and thinly cut pieces of beef that I cooked with garlic, ginger, onion and soy sauce. It was interesting, i like to experiment.

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