How to Make Vegetarian Summer Rolls with Peanut Dipping Sauce (No Cooking Required)

When I returned to work in Bangkok post-cancer treatment, I often made low carb home cooked meals packed with vegetables and fruits. Some of my easy go-to recipes are featured in the above photo: Summer rolls, chopped salad, and frozen berries beverage. I used Thai riceberry paper in these summer rolls, thus the purple hue.

Spending time in the kitchen food prepping was kind of therapeutic for me. Of course you can use a food processor, but the melody and focus from manually cutting the vegetables and fruits into either strips or cubes was my ASMR. I also believe that having food in smaller pieces aids my digestion, especially when I was eating a lot of raw vegan meals at one point in time.

As the seasons start to change these days, my YouTube feed became saturated with summer roll recipes. Back home here in Singapore, we don't have the 4 seasons - only hot, hotter, hottest and... yes, it's really hot! Somehow our warm and humid Singapore climate makes it the perfect weather to enjoy summer rolls all year round.

This photo shows our vegetarian summer roll lunch on June 4, 2022. I simply used whatever I could find in our fridge! The same goes for the first photo, where you can see that I reused the same vegetables and fruits for both the summer rolls and the chopped salad.

It's a great way to use up any leftover ingredients in your fridge. And in my case, I've used leftover avocadoes, overripe mangos, bell peppers (a.k.a. capsicums), and red cabbage (wonder why it's called red cabbage when it's purple!).

The key to a good vegetarian summer roll, I would say, is to include some crunchy textures to contrast against the stretchy soft rice paper "skin". You can use vegetables like raw carrots and cucumbers, or fruits like apples or pears. For fruits, you may want to soak the cut pieces in salt water for a couple of minutes so that the fruit doesn't oxidize and turn brown that fast.

This easy summer roll recipe is a vegetarian version. It includes a variety of plant-based ingredients I managed to salvage from our fridge: pear, mango, cucumber, carrot, egg omelet (feel free to omit), firm tofu, soy-protein sausage, and a peppermint leaf from our drying-up peppermint plant thanks to the heat these days!

Our cousin taught us to always incorporate proteins for a fuller vegetarian meal. I found soy-protein sausages that were sitting in the freezer for weeks, and firm tofu (tau kwa) resting in a pool of water that has became solid ice! I had to do something about these ingredients! So, I fried up 5 soy-protein sausages, 2 firm tofu (tau kwa) and a thick omelet of 2 eggs. All were cut into long thin strips (yes, some did crumbled into smaller pieces).

Of course this recipe doesn't really require cooking. You can opt for other non-cook vegetarian protein sources such as a sprinkle of nutritional yeast, or a fistful of chopped almonds or walnuts, or a spoonful of rolled oats pre-soaked in soy milk. Canned chickpeas or canned baked beans would make a great addition too.

How to Make Vegetarian Summer Roll

As you can see from the above photo, you don't need much fancy tools, ingredients or even kitchen counter space to make a delicious vegetarian summer roll. (Still wondering when I'll get my own kitchen again...)

After you have set aside your ingredients to be included into the summer roll, set your rice paper on a non-stick surface (I used a plastic cutting board) and a bowl of water (I used tap water).

I then dipped my fingers into the water and start brushing my wet fingertips onto the rice paper. The moistened rice paper will soon become pliable for folding and rolling.

I know that some recipes would ask you to dip the rice paper into a bowl of warm water, and then lay the paper down on a plate or flat surface. I tried that previously and the rice paper starts sticking to itself and into a ball of clumpy mess. It was a soggy disaster. I can't recall how many rice paper I wasted.

After laying my ingredients in the center of the moist rice paper, I made 3 folds (refer to Step 1 and 2 in the above photo). This way, the ingredients are secured in an open envelope.

Next, I used my fingers to tuck the ingredients into the envelope as I rolled the rice paper in direction of Step 3.

If you prefer your summer roll to look more attractive, do lay the peppermint leaf at the bottom (unlike in the above photo), and colorful ingredients towards the end of the rolling direction (just like in the above photo). This way the peppermint leaf and colorful ingredients will be on the outer-side of your summer roll and not hidden by the other ingredients.

Summer Roll Peanut Dipping Sauce Recipe

Truth be told, I actually dug out the remains of an almost empty peanut butter jar I found in our kitchen. Haha! Yes, the wonders you can do with leftovers you find at home!

For the peanut dipping sauce, I used about 3 tablespoons of crunchy peanut butter, 1 tablespoon of light soy sauce and 1 tablespoon of roasted sesame oil.

After stirring for a while, I realized that the dipping sauce was rather thick with big lumps of peanut butter. We had a leftover quarter of a lemon from a pear and cucumber salad I made earlier. So I squeezed some lemon and added some drinking water to dilute the sauce.

With further stirring, I was able to break the peanut butter lumps into smaller bits. If you don't have lemon on hand, alternatives can be a dash of tamarind juice, rice vinegar, or apple cider vinegar.

Be sure to taste the final dipping sauce, and you can adjust the flavor by adding more light soy sauce or roasted sesame oil.

Summer Roll Paper

Rice paper is traditionally made by grinding soaked raw rice and adding starch to make a slurry, and then spreading the slurry thinly on a wet cloth and steamed for less than a minute. The steamed sheet is then transferred into a bamboo weaved basket, which leaves the checkered design when fully dried.

I doubt I would make DIY rice paper using rice starch, tapioca starch and water, as it does seem a tedious and time-consuming process.

Since it is already steamed, rice paper doesn't require further cooking. As shared above, I just moisten the rice paper with my wet fingertips and it becomes pliable for use.

Bonus recipe: you can stick a sheet of seaweed paper onto the moist rice paper, leave the combined sheet to dry, and then deep-fry the dried combined sheet to make a Korean crispy snack, gim bugak.

While rice papers are used for Vietnamese, Korean and Chinese cuisines, you would normally find them labelled as Vietnamese rice paper. In Singapore, you should be able to find rice paper in most supermarkets or Asian grocery stores in various sizes like 16cm and 22cm.

As a beginner myself, I would recommend using the smaller rice paper as it's easier to manage, fold and roll when moist. Otherwise you may risk working with a clumpy ball of wet rice sheet that keeps sticking to itself. I bought the 16cm version, which should contain about 19 to 21 sheets. Lucky me! My packet contains 21 sheets.

I hope you've gotten many good tips from this post about preparing a tasty vegetarian summer roll. Eat well!