Soul Rolls

Pity the poor, lonely loaf of wheat bread with honey and cumin… That was supposed to be this morning’s post.

Until, I made these little lovelies.

Ground turkey, shredded cabbage, onion, a bit of seasoning, and cheese; all rolled up in a wrapper, lightly browned in oil, then finished and crisped in the oven.

Add the two tasty sauces, and I believe we have a real winner, all thanks to Coolio.

INGREDIENTS
Rolls:
•1 package egg roll wrappers
•1 pound ground turkey or beef
• 1/2 tbsp (1-1/2 tsp) seasoned salt*
•1/2 tbsp (1-1/2 tsp) ground black pepper
•1 large clove of garlic, minced
•1 onion, chopped
•Canola oil, for frying
•1 small head green cabbage, shredded – I bought the smallest head of cabbage I could at the market, and, shredded, it came out to 9 or 10 cups. I used 2 or 3 cups total. I would mebbe buy a bag of shredded next time.
•2 cups shredded jack or Cheddar cheese

Dipping Sauces:
•1-1/2 cup prepared BBQ sauce – I used 1 pint of mine
•Syrup from one 15-oz can sliced peaches
•Syrup from one 15-oz can pineapple chunks

First things first: you won’t be using the fruit from the cans for this recipe, but come back for Friday’s Parfait! and I’ll set you up with a nice little condiment to go with your Easter ham.

Leftover fruit taken care of, let’s get started on these rolls.

Divide the barbecue sauce in two, and add 3 tablespoons of the peach syrup to one half, and 3 tablespoons of the pineapple syrup to the other. Nice.

Stir the onion, garlic, salt, and pepper together in a bowl with the ground turkey.

Heat 2 tablespoons of canola oil in a large sauté pan, then cook the turkey mixture until done.

Turn the turkey out into a bowl to cool and clean the sauté pan.

Arrange the turkey, cabbage, and shredded cheese in an assembly line and get ready to roll.

Lay an egg roll wrapper on a clean surface and arrange some shredded cabbage, a few spoonfuls of the turkey, and a bit of the shredded cheese diagonally across the center.

Pull the bottom edge up and over the filling, tucking it in a bit and nudging to tighten the filling in the wrapper.

Fold in the side corners and finish rolling. Add a dab of water to the final (top) edge of the wrapper to seal the deal when the roll is closed.

Continue doing this with all the wrappers – I had cheese and cabbage (a LOT) leftover, but one pound of turkey with the onion and garlic and seasonings was just about perfect for one package of 20 wrappers.

I arranged all my rolls on a rack fitted into a half-sheet pan and got ready to cook.

Coolio deep fried his rolls; but I thought I’d take a lesson from my new favorite, kinda good-for-you, onion rings and brown mine a just a bit of oil, then finish ’em off in the oven, which I heated to 400º.

Heat 2 tablespoons of oil in a sauté pan over medium heat.

Add 2 or 3 of the rolls at a time and brown them on each side – a couple of minutes should do it, then return the now nicely browned rolls to your rack on the baking pan and continue with the remaining rolls.

You may need to add a bit more oil, and the rolls may brown quite a bit faster as you go along, so do keep an eye on things.

Once all the rolls are browned and arranged on that handy rack in the half-sheet pan, pop ’em into your hot oven for 15 minutes to finish cooking and crisp them all up nicely.

How tasty is that? The browning in just a bit of oil and finishing on a rack in a hot oven worked a treat, and I have to believe made these tasty little treats more or less healthy (!)

The dipping sauces were pretty darned tasty, too.

*Coolio (or mebbe the nice folk at Food Network) specified Lawry’s Seasoned Salt, but I went to da Google and found a pretty simple recipe for making your own:

•2 tbsp salt
•2 tsp sugar
•1/2 tsp paprika
•1/4 tsp turmeric
•1/4 tsp onion powder
•1/4 tsp garlic powder
•1/4 tsp cornstarch

Combine all together (I whisked, then shook it all up) and stash in a jar.

I didn’t have any onion powder, so used 1/2 tsp garlic powder, and it all worked out fine; another advantage of making stuff like this yourself.

Just a thought.