These baked Japanese spring rolls are made with crisp filo pastry wrapped around a flavour packed vegetable filling. They made a fun finger food for lunch, entertaining, or as part of a family dinner.
Harumaki are Japanese spring rolls. The filling is more wet than Chinese spring rolls and thickened with potato starch or corn flour and, unlike Chinese spring rolls, they don’t contain garlic.
Harumaki were one of the first Japanese foods I tried when we moved to Japan. There was a large department store over the train station near to the hotel we were staying in. The bottom floor was a food department, selling an array of local delicacies. With minimal Japanese between us – to say the least! – it was a case of looking intently at each stall to see if we could get some kind of clue as to what the things were, as well as seeing which things were popular. The spring roll stall had one of the longest queues so we joined up, bought 4 – one of each variety (we had no idea what exactly was in them) – and took them back to the hotel. The soft filling was full of flavour, and with the contrasting crispy crunchy shell, we just wanted more; and we returned to the stall multiple times.
Whilst Japanese spring rolls are traditionally filled with pork, chicken, shrimp, shitake mushrooms and vermicelli; I have made these ones vegetarian and have used regular mushrooms instead of mushrooms to make them to make them full of ingredients you are more likely to have to hand, and keep them simple. I wanted to make this a recipe that you could make with minimal special ingredients, and one the family could enjoy time and again.
In the same vain, whilst I love deep fried crispy rolls, I don’t deep fry things at home. So instead I have used filo pastry and baked these rolls. These spring rolls can be made with any leftover meat of vegetables you have – leftover roast chicken would go particularly well.
Make them your spring rolls:
Add meat: add some cooked chicken or pork mince
Vegan spring rolls: These are actually vegan spring rolls (just check your filo pastry, but most are vegan these days)
If you like this recipe, you might also like these:
Crispy Lamb wraps – an easy way to use leftover roast lamb
Savoury Cheese Welsh Cakes – a simple snack that doesn’t need the oven
Baked Japanese Spring Rolls
Ingredients
- 2 spring onions cut into thirds then shredded
- 2 carrots coarsely grated
- 2 leaves cabbage from ½ cabbage, finely shredded
- ½ green capsicum/pepper thinly sliced
- 3 mushrooms roughly chopped
- 2 cm | ¾ inches fresh ginger finely grated
- 2 tsp neutral oil vegetable oil or grapeseed oil
- 2 tbsp light soy sauce
- 2 tsp sesame oil
- 2 tsp rice vinegar
- 2 tsp cornflour
- 1 tbsp water
- 2 tsp sesame seeds
- 3 sheets filo pastry
- a little extra neutral oil for brushing the pastry
Simple dipping sauce:
- 1 tbsp light soy sauce
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
- small pinch sugar
Instructions
- Prepare all the vegetables.
- Heat the oil in a large saucepan over a medium-high heat and add all the vegetables and ginger.
- Cook, stirring occasionally, for 3-4 minutes until the vegetables are starting to soften.
- Add the soy sauce, sesame oil and rice vinegar.Mix the cornflour with the water then add this too. Stir the vegetables and cook until the liquid has evaporated.
- Leave to cool slightly (around 5-10 minutes).
- Preheat the oven to 190˚C / 374 ˚F.
- Line a baking sheet with baking paper.
- Cut each filo pastry sheet into 3 pieces and brush a little olive oil over each piece.
- Place a tbsp of the vegetable mixture onto the third of pastry, on one end leaving a 1-2 cm gap on all edges then fold in the long sides and then roll up.
- Place on the baking sheet seam side down and repeat with the other 8 rolls.
- Lightly drizzle over a little oil and sprinkled with sesame seeds then place in the oven and cook for 15-18 minutes until golden.
- Whilst they are cooking make the simple dipping sauce: just whisk all the ingredients together.
- Serve straight away with the simple dipping sauce or a dipping sauce of your choice.
Nutrition
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Jaimie says
I’ve pinned this to try later, what a perfect entertainer!
Robyn says
They are a great entertainer! Hope you enjoy them Jaimie!
Sylvie says
I had never heard of oven baked spring rolls but it sounds fantastic, especially when you don’t want to deep fry in your kitchen!
Robyn says
Oven baking them is such a tidier and healthier way of enjoying spring rolls, thanks Sylvie!
Sarah says
I love playing ‘let’s find something to eat when traveling. Sometimes it’s tasty, sometimes it’s just weird :D. These look great, I love they are oven baked and not fried, easier and healthier 🙂
Robyn says
Yes sometimes the foodie finds are more successful than other times 😉 Thanks Sarah