Homemade Chicken Summer Rolls with Sweet Chili Sauce

Summer rolls seem super daunting, but I’m here to tell you that they are actually pretty easy to make. That being said, they’re definitely not going to be perfect the first time you make them! So, don’t go into the project thinking they’ll end up looking like what you get from your local Vietnamese restaurant. You’ll find they get easier to roll the more you make them. If they don’t look the way you want them to the first time, don’t give up! Practice makes better, so my first tip is to keep making them until you’re happy with your technique.

I made these with chicken, but if you’d prefer, I also have a shrimp summer roll recipe. It’s published in Gluten Free Living Magazine. For all of the shrimp lovers out there, you can find that recipe HERE.

Your first step should always be to gather your ingredients. I always like to prep all of my components of any dish ahead of time! For this recipe in particular though, it’s crucial that your veggies are sliced before you start the rolling phase.

Phase #1 – Prepping the Ingredients

You’ll need mango, cucumber, romaine lettuce, red bell peppers, carrots, rotisserie chicken, thin rice noodles, sweet chili sauce, black sesame seeds, and summer roll wrappers. The lettuce is flexible. If you don’t like romaine, or don’t have any, iceberg will work the same way. In any of my other recipes, I would say you could even use baby spinach or arugula. However, for these summer rolls, I really do not think the alternative flavors go well together. I like to use romaine or iceberg because they’re both so mild in flavor but so crisp. They add the perfect crunch to the summer rolls, which otherwise would be one-note when it comes to the texture.

I used a red bell pepper because I love the way it looks with the orange of the carrots, yellow mango, and green cucumbers. If you’d rather use orange or yellow bell peppers, go for it! Everything will taste the same, the difference will just be in the aesthetics of it.

FInding a Gluten Free Sweet Chili Sauce –

For my Sweet Chili Sauce, I use the brand Mae Ploy. I believe I found it at Whole Foods. Any sweet chili sauce will do, just make sure it’s gluten free. If you want to save yourself all the crazy investigating, get this brand! I think it’s delicious, and I know it’s gluten free.

Regarding the chicken, I recommend rotisserie because it’s easy as pie to shred. If you want, you can grill chicken breasts, let them rest until they are cooled, and shred them instead, but it’s so much easier to shred a rotisserie, and can be a real time saver, as this recipe can take a while to make, especially on your first attempt.

To prep, boil your noodles according to the directions on the packaging. For these, I had to boil the water, then remove it from the heat and submerge the noodles for 3-5 minutes until cooked through. For this recipe, because NONE of your ingredients should be going into the summer roll warm, shock your noodles in cold running water after cooking, then toss in a tablespoon or so of sesame oil (this is really important, otherwise, they’ll stick together and form some kind of monstrous noodle cake) and top with black sesame seeds.

The mango, carrots, cucumber, and bell pepper should all be julienned to identical sizes. The lettuce should be really thinly sliced, then add the sweet chili sauce to the chicken and mix until evenly coated.

Phase #2 – The Set Up

Believe it or not, the key to an unstoppable summer roll assembly line is the initial set up. Here’s a picture of mine:

I like to set up a “wrapper station” on the left, have my ingredients on the right, and in the middle, my folding station.

You’ll notice I used a wooden cutting board. This is because the wrappers tend to stick a little more to the wood, which causes more tension on the wrapper during rolling, and lets me have a tighter roll. The trade-off of using a wooden cutting board for rolling, however, is that if you take too long putting the filling in and don’t begin rolling quickly enough, it can stick to the board completely and when you try to roll it, it can tear, which ruins the wrapper. If this is your first time making summer rolls of any kind, I think it is easier to use plastic as a rolling board, at least until you get the hang of it.

The pie dish on the left in my “wrapper station” is filled 2/3 of the way up with just below boiling water. Out of the frame of the picture, I have a tea kettle with boiling water in it, and when the water in the dish gets too cool, I replace it with hotter water, to ensure the wrappers soften enough to become pliable. The wrappers are made out of the same thing as a rice noodle, so it cooks in hot water, but since it is so thin, it can overcook VERY quickly. I leave mine in the warm/hot water for about 2 minutes each while I fold another roll. You can find the extended rolling routine/process analysis under the next phase.

Phase #3 – The Rolling (The final phase!!)

The pre-step one is to fill your pie dish with warm/hot water. (you can use a shallow bowl with a wide diameter if you would like, it really just needs to be able to fit the raw wrapper in it).

Step one is to submerge one wrapper into the water and let it sit for a few minutes until softened. After it is cooked, it should be extremely pliable and completely transparent. Right after you take this wrapper out of the water and begin rolling, immediately submerge one more wrapper into the water to ensure it cooks by the time you are ready to roll the next one.

This is what the rolling process should look like:

Put 4 out of the 6 ingredients (not including lettuce) down in the middle of the wrapper. Do NOT use the lettuce on the bottom layer as that makes it impossible to get a tight roll.

Add the remaining 2 ingredients + lettuce on top of the base layer of 4 ingredients.

Fold the top and bottom of the wrapper into the middle of the roll. They should overlap like this:

Take one side of the wrapper and fold it over the rest like this:

The last step is to roll the summer roll as tight as you can without ripping the wrapper. I do this by grabbing the left side in the previous photo, and gently rolling it towards the right side of the board until the summer roll is sealed. After that, congrats! You’ve made one summer roll!!

Happy cooking people! I hope you stick through the possible rough first try of this recipe to achieve the AMAZING end result! Remember, it’ll taste the same even if it isn’t as pretty as you had hoped. Don’t get discouraged!