Food Adventures #9: Buffalo Chicken Egg Rolls and Crab Rangoons

For some reason I've been having a serious craving for Buffalo Chicken for awhile now- specifically in egg roll form and, as I'd never made egg rolls before, I thought, why not give it a shot? So I minced some green onions, red onions and celery, cooked up a couple of chicken breasts and shredded them up nicely- drowned them in Frank's Red Hot Buffalo Sauce and the following resulted:

Props to the Missus who handled the rolling duties- they say they work best if you seal them up with an egg wash (which we did) and I would also recommend spraying them with just a touch of Pam to get them a little crispy (we baked ours, we didn't fry them...) something that worked really well with the Crab Rangoons. But overall- awesome stuff. Even the Missus liked them and she will be the first to tell you that she is no fan of the spicy anything, much less Buffalo chicken.

Then we turned our attention to these:

You might not be able to tell all that well, because we made a TON of them and they're all piled together on one plate, but those are the first batch of homemade Crab Rangoons. I gotta digress here for a moment: the crab rangoon, to me, is one of the culinary treasures of modern civilization. A perfect one will balance the creamy goodness of the cream cheese and the flavor of the crab perfectly and to be totally honest, the quality of crab rangoons is what I judge pretty much every new Chinese restaurant I eat at by. (I know all the Iowa Citians will probably be jumping up and down and saying 'Jade Sisters! Jade Sisters!' But I have to disagree- the food was well cooked, to be sure, but overpriced and their rangoon failed to impress. Best Crab Rangoon in Iowa City was to be found at Easy Place Chinese Place, which used to be right next to Joe's Place until it burned down- a real tragedy. That food was amazing- so were their ran goons. And they delivered. I lived off that stuff for a whole semester as an undergrad...)

Anyway, these doohickeys were pretty easy to make. Cream cheese, green onions, crab, garlic salt. Mould it all together into a ball, splash a dollop onto a won-ton wrapper (seal it with egg wash again) and when you've got a tray full, spray 'em down with Pam. Crispy awesomeness will result. You want another picture? I know you do...

Here:

Mmmmmm... crab rangoons....