Vietnamese Summer Rolls with Peanut Sauce

Ingredients

• 12 sheet Rice paper wrappers
• 4 oz Rice noodles (dry), cooked and cooled
• ½ block Extra-firm tofu, cut into strips and pan-fried
• 8 leaf Butter lettuce
• 2 Carrots, matchsticks
• 1 Cucumber, matchsticks
• ½ cup Fresh mint
• ½ cup Cilantro
• ½ cup Fresh basil
• ⅜ cup Natural peanut butter
• 3 tbsp Hoisin sauce
• 1 Lime
• 1 tsp Sriracha
• 2 tbsp Roasted peanuts, crushed

Method

1. Make the sauce: whisk peanut butter, hoisin, the juice of the lime, sriracha and 4-5 tablespoons of warm water until it pours off a spoon in a ribbon. Top with crushed peanuts.
2. Lay everything out in a row — noodles, tofu, vegetables, herbs — with a wide shallow bowl of warm water at the near end.
3. Dip one rice paper in the water for two seconds only. It should come out stiff; it keeps softening on the board while you fill it. Anyone whose rolls tear is soaking too long.
4. Lay it flat. In the lower third, stack a lettuce leaf, a small nest of noodles, two tofu strips, a pinch of carrot and cucumber, and a generous pile of herbs. Keep it smaller than seems right.
5. Fold the bottom over the filling, fold in both sides, then roll it up tight. Set finished rolls apart on the plate — they weld together if they touch.
6. Serve within a couple of hours, whole or halved on the diagonal, with the peanut sauce.

Notes

✨ The restaurant touch

Herbs by the handful, not the pinch. The difference between a good summer roll and a limp one is a quantity of mint that feels excessive.

🧒 For the kids

Set the table up as an assembly line and let everyone roll their own. Under-eights do better with a wrapper cut in half and a small filling.

🥡 Leftovers

Best within 3 hours. Cover with a damp towel; do not refrigerate uncovered or the wrappers turn hard and cloudy.

Per serving

Computed from USDA FoodData Central values. A planning tool, not medical advice.