You CANNOT use spring roll wrappers to make egg rolls!

No matter WHAT anyone says!
I was making a HUGE batch of eggrolls the other day, and our local stores didn't have any egg roll wrappers. They only had wonton and spring roll wrappers.
So I did a thorough search and found a ton of places that basically said "sure! Use the spring roll wrappers! They work great!"



bad advice

confusing comments after article about spring rolls/egg rolls

and there were a couple of places that said egg roll wrappers aren't as crisp when fried as are spring roll wrappers, and tons of references to frying spring roll wrappers.

LIES!!! All LIES!!!

Well, the most OBVIOUS thing wrong with them is that they are super thin and delicate. So I used two, to increase the thickness. This turns out to be the ONLY thing I do right in this fiasco!
I roll up 24 egg rolls but I only had enough wrappers for 20 to be wrapped in a double thickness. So four were single thickness.

So I decide to cook these puppies, and fire up a vat full of boiling oil. I drop in 5 or 6 (since I've cooked egg rolls w/ egg roll wrappers before) and instantly they adhere to one another and then burst open, sending little bits of veggies into the oil. Nice! When they get crunchy enough, I pull them out, then run a strainer through the pan to get out the deep fried veggie bits. Bleck. It DID smell divine, though! But that mass of soggy and exploded egg rolls went to the trash (after I tasted a bit of the filling...yum!)

So I try again, with two! NOPE! they still stuck to one another and the tongs when I went to turn them! ARRRG!!! Again with the tiny bits of deep friend veggies. Into the trash with those!

So....ONE at a time! I put it in and immediately flipped it over (REAL egg rolls turn themselves, btw), crisped it well on one side, then flipped it over again. I did this with the remaining egg rolls that had a two-layer thick wrapper. I was afraid of the ones with only ONE!

As soon as each one finished, I stood the upright in a colander which was over paper towels to absorb any draining oil. After I got about 8 or so in there, I transferred them to a flat surface. 4 of the egg rolls in the colander were stuck together in such a way that they couldn't be separated without breaking!!! OMG!!! Will it NEVER end??? So there went those.

After solving all of those problems and frying all but the one-layer-wrapper egg rolls, I give THOSE a try, and I was right: they burst open immediately. Mess, mess, mess.
So there went those four.

All in all, I ended up with NINE successful egg rolls. And the wrappers ARE NOT crisp.
Out of 24. How sad is that? :(
I will never, ever, ever, use spring roll wrappers again!