one filipino dish a week

In my previous lumpia post I didn’t have much luck with the wrapper. I was at the Asian store and decided to try out the different brands that they had. I think the right wrapper AND sauce will make this dish amazing.

1. Wei Chuan - I think this is the brand of wrapper that I see everywhere in Asian stores and pretty common. As I looked into the details of the wrapper it’s made in the USA so that explains it. This is a fairly decent size wrapper with a pretty good thickness that looks like it will hold up.

Ingredients: enriched whear flour, water, salt, soybean oil, sodium of pholyphosphate & carbonate, mono and di-glycerides, polysorbitan esters of stearates, lecithin, citric acid.

2. Spring Home - I was very interested that this was smaller size. I wanted to figure out if making smaller rolls will affect how it cooks and in effect the taste. I looked more closely at the label and this is made in Singapore by Tee Yih Jia Food Manufacturing Ltd. The wrapper itself was pretty close to what the Wei Chuan was but not as “strechable.”

Ingredients: wheat flour, water, coconut oil, salt

3. Pacific Isles - I’ve never seen this before until now. It says “Lumpia Wrapper” in HUGE letters so there’s no way I wasn’t going to try this one out. This is actually made in the Philippines. These kinds of things may be more common in the West coast but I don’t see this often here. This is the wrapper that stands out from the rest. It is not like any of the other two. It is round and not a smooth texture.

Ingredients: wheat flour, water and salt.

What I found extremely interesting is that out of the 3 wrappers the one made in the US is the one that has the longest list of ingredients. and preservatives? Probably explains the strength of the wrapper. I don’t really know what all those other “non-food” ingredients are. I wonder if it’s just that the FDA requires them to label and the other countries don’t have to. In any case to wrapping we go…

I made the vegetable lumpia similar to my previous post but without the tofu. I made a few of each wrapper. In terms of being consistent the Wei Chuan and Spring Home we comparable. Each wrapper had the same size and the quality of each wrapper was pretty much the same. The Pacific Isles however was pretty much all over the place. The wrappers were sticking to each other and they were not all the same size, they tear easily and the wrapper was not smooth. Even at the small size picture you can clearly tell the difference.

I also wrapped a couple of the small wrappers a different way. In the lower right hand portion of the picture I wrapped two of them straight on and not the “diamond”.

I deep fried them in a pot of canola oil at 350deg F. I finally figured out that having consistent oil temperature is the key to deep frying. Yay! Time to Eat!

Spring Home - as I was cooking the spring home the way I wrapped it the roll kept on rolling on one side and it wouldn’t cook evenly on the other side. The wrapper was good. Pretty consistent. But I don’t think it was as good as the other two. I think it was just too small. It didn’t get as crunchy as the other two. This may be better for other things but not vegetable lumpia.

Wrapping it in two different ways didn’t make a difference. It came out the same and didn’t add any crunchiness.

Pacific Isles - I did not have high hopes for this wrapper. Especially with all the problems I had with the wrapper tearing and etc. But this turned out to be pretty good. It was the crunchiest out of all of the wrappers. It had great depth. It had an almost flaky texture. Even the one that I messed up wrapping didn’t break apart and crumble into pieces. I was quite impressed at how it turned out.

Wei Chuan - No frills. And I think this is pretty consistent. I don’t think it added anything to the experience of eating the lumpia. It was ok with the crunchiness. It held up pretty good with in the deep fry.

The verdict… surprisingly I really liked the Pacific Isles but I did not like the inconsistency of the quality wrapper to wrapper. If they can have better QA and keep it consistent I would go for that wrapper. The Wei Chuan is a good solid go-to wrapper for your everyday lumpia needs. The Spring Home was a little bit too small and didn’t get the crunchiness that I would’ve liked. In the end, I ate a lot of lumpia so I’m happy.

Eat Filipino Food!