My best friend is Vietnamese and once taught me to make delicious spring rolls (the ones wrapped in rice paper, not fried) and while they are fun to make and totally delic, they can be a little time consuming.
I was really craving them one day and decided to give Gloria’s Pantry a try: http://www.polaro.com
/gloriaspantry/. Gloria’s Pantry makes vegetarian and vegan food for on the go.
While Gloria’s spring rolls look similar to the ones I previously made from scratch, they didn’t taste anything like them. First of all, Gloria’s spring rolls have hideous packaging. They’re wrapped individually in massive amounts of plastic wrap and that bundled together and wrapped yet again. And, what’s worse - the taste! They are so bland and dry. The rice paper is tough, like tearing through rubber - Gloria obviously doesn’t know the rice paper trick - soaking it in lukewarm water for 30 seconds to get it nice and soft.
And while I’ll admit that the filling in the spring rolls is decent (not to mention standard): red cabbage, carrots, tofu, lettuce, green onion, and mint, the peanut sauce is absolutely awful!!! Gloria’s peanut sauce is watery and oily and nothing like the peanut sauce I learned to make. I’m used to the Hoison and peanut butter based sauces that are thick and have that perfect balance of sweet and salty. Gloria’s peanut sauce is more like peanut vinegar. While the ingredients on the label (soy sauce, white wine vinegar, peanut butter, honey pressed sesame oil, ginger, lime juice, red pepper) seem right, I think her proportions are all wrong. Its like 3-1 vinegar/oil to peanut butter/soy sauce/ginger.
While I don’t recommend Gloria’s spring rolls, I haven’t yet tried any of the other products (burritos, sambosas, and wraps) and am down to give them a fair trial before writing Gloria completely out of my will.
I’m also still on the lookout for packaged spring rolls and would love to review any other organic, vegetarian and/or natural food companies that are attempting to make a spring roll that I can hang with.
