We all make mistakes. Even as perfect as I am, I too make a mistake now and then. Especially in the kitchen. I like to try new things, maybe expand my horizons a bit, but they don’t always turn out so great. This new feature, Kitchen Disasters, will highlight some of my more idiotic moments in the kitchen.
This apple pie egg roll idea evolved like many of my other pitiful attempts at making something unique and delicious: I needed to bring a dessert to a family gathering and I had a half a package of egg roll wrappers and a bag of apples lying around.
It seemed like a good idea and simple too. Make a pie filing with the apples, stuff it into the egg roll wrappers and fry the little guys up. Those apple pies at McDonalds aren’t too much different and they taste great. (Well, they used to taste great, when they were deep fried.)
I made the filling and it tasted great. Wrapping it in the egg roll wrappers was a snap, I had a nice line of plump, round egg rolls waiting to be fried. This is when things started to go down hill.
The frying worked out fine until the egg rolls were taken out, but the heat from frying heated up the filling enough that it released all kinds of moisture. Within seconds of being removed from the heat the egg rolls deflated and pretty soon I had a rack full of what looked to be deep fried sweat socks. Nice.
Not only were they horrible to look at but they tasted awful. The texture was so distracting they could have been filled with the most delicious thing on planet earth and I wouldn’t have noticed.
I still brought them to the dinner because at that point I had invested so much time in this brilliant idea that there wasn’t time for anything else. My Mom and sister ate them, saying they were good, but I think it was just because they didn’t want to hurt my feelings.
Could it be fixed?
Maybe. They only two things I can think to do to fix this would be to either cook the apple filling much longer to extract as much moisture as possible or after wrapping them stick them into the freezer for a few hours. The thought being that if frozen, the filling wouldn’t have enough time to heat up and release moisture.
Some other posts you might enjoy:
September 25th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Could you have baked them? Scored some slots on the tops of them so the steam escapes, and brush some butter on top of them with sugar and cinnamon. I know this would work with a pie dough, kind of mini pies, but not sure about the texture of egg roll dough. Maybe instead of looking like apple eggrolls you lifted the corners and at the top leave a hole for the steam. So more of an apple pot sticker (tried to avoid word dumpling).
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October 8th, 2009 at 12:45 am
I just did this.*sigh* Wish I would have found your blog before I attempted it. Luckily I only made 4 test ones…so not too bad of a mess. Now to figure out what to use the apple filling for insead…. thanks for posting your experience! It is great to know I’m not alone.
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September 10th, 2011 at 6:38 pm
I was thinking of doing this. I put in a google and found this. After reading your disaster, I decided to look and see if anyone else had tried it and got it right. Please check out this website:
http://www.missinthekitchen.com/2011/01/04/apple-pie-egg-rolls/
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