I’ve had this idea of making Totino’s style pizza rolls for some time now. I’m not sure why, as I don’t recall the last time I purchased a bag of them, but I do recall liking them when I did pop 5 or 10 of them in my mouth. You know, when you popped one in, bit down, and hot pizza lava exploded in your mouth burning the inside of your mouth. Yeah, those things. So when I recently walked by the frozen section at the store, those pizza rolls caught my attention, and I decided to look at the ingredients. Now I know why I never buy those things! They are loaded with crap I cannot even pronounce, let alone the sheer number of ingredients only to make up a pepperoni pizza roll. This is when I wanted to make my own, and then decided to go full force and forget the popper sized bites and create an egg roll out of them as well.
These pizza egg rolls are super easy to make and to be honest, are pretty darn spectacular, especially if you are making them for a game day gathering.
Let’s get started.
Ingredients:
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 3/4 cup of marinara sauce
- 1 lb Italian sausage, casing removed
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 large shallot, minced
- 1/2 cup of pepperoni slices, chopped
- 1 1/2 cups of shredded mozzarella cheese
- egg roll wrappers
- 2 cups canola oil
- grated parmesan cheese, optional
- additional marinara sauce, optional
- 1 egg, beaten
Start by heating the olive oil in a skillet or pot on medium-high heat. Once heated, add in the Italian sausage, crumbling and cooking it along the way. Once cooked toss in the garlic, pepperoni, and shallots, and cook an additional 5 minutes or until the shallot has sweated through. Add in the marinara sauce, stir, and then set aside to let cool.
Once your mixture has cooled, add in the shredded cheese, and mix to incorporate all of the ingredients.
Now is the time to heat the canola oil in a medium sized pot, on medium heat. We can turn up the heat after forming the pizza egg rolls.
When I make egg rolls, I typically use a spring roll style wrapper as I tend not to like the common egg roll wrapper sold in many grocery stores. These are the ones that bubble up and are traditional in Chinese-American restaurants. But I was going for those Totino sytle pizza rolls, of which have that bubbled up appearance and texture when frying.
As you can see by the picture below, I also made pizza rolls.
Let’s make the egg rolls.
Lay out one wrapper, in a diamond formation. I like to place one on a plate with a point in front of me. Add about 3 tablespoons of the mixture in the center, closest to you. Fold the wrapper over the mixture, and gently pull or roll back towards you to tighten the egg roll. Once pulled back, roll forward a turn or two, then fold over the sides, tucking underneath the roll. Â Brush the egg mixture onto about 1 inch of the top diamond area, the roll to seal.
Your goal here is to have a tight seal as you do not want cheese and hot oil to interfere. That will not be good, trust me. This video sums it up if you need any reference as to how to wrap an egg roll.
Repeat with as many wrappers or egg rolls that you would like to make. Mine yielded about 12 pizza egg rolls.
Now go check on your oil and temperature. You want your oil to be around 375 degrees. Once your oil is heated, carefully add a few egg rolls to the preheated oil. You do not want to overcrowd the pizza egg rolls.
These will fry up in a matter of minutes so keep an eye on them. Once a deep golden brown, remove with your slotted spoon or spider and place onto a wire rack, or paper lined plate to remove any excess oil.
Repeat until completed.
To serve, you can shower the egg rolls with finely grated parmesan cheese, and a bowl full of heated marinara.
The texture of the egg roll wrapper lent itself perfectly with these pizza egg rolls. I’ll be honest, I devoured two of them right away and had to back away from them as they were that great. My wife who seemed a bit skeptical fell in love with them, as well as did my son and daughter.
The great thing about these pizza egg rolls is that I knew every ingredient that was going into them, and they were actually better than Totino’s pizza rolls. Not only that but you can get as creative as you want with the stuffing. Hands down. I hope you enjoy them as much as we did!
Pizza Egg Rolls
Ingredients
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 3/4 cup of marinara sauce
- 1 lb Italian sausage casing removed
- 2 cloves garlic minced
- 1 large shallot minced
- 1/2 cup of pepperoni slices chopped
- 1 1/2 cups of shredded mozzarella cheese
- egg roll wrappers
- 2 cups canola oil
- grated parmesan cheese optional
- additional marinara sauce optional
- 1 egg beaten
Instructions
- Start by heating the olive oil in a skillet or pot on medium-high heat. Once heated, add in the Italian sausage, crumbling and cooking it along the way. Once cooked toss in the garlic, pepperoni, and shallots, and cook an additional 5 minutes or until the shallot has sweated through. Add in the marinara sauce, stir, and then set aside to let cool.
- Once your mixture has cooled, add in the shredded cheese, and mix to incorporate all of the ingredients.
- Now is the time to heat the canola oil in a medium sized pot, on medium heat. We can turn up the heat after forming the pizza egg rolls.
- When I make egg rolls, I typically use a spring roll style wrapper as I tend not to like the common egg roll wrapper sold in many grocery stores. These are the ones that bubble up and are traditional in Chinese-American restaurants. But I was going for those Totino sytle pizza rolls, of which have that bubbled up appearance and texture when frying.
- As you can see by the picture below, I also made pizza rolls.
- Let's make the egg rolls.
- Lay out one wrapper, in a diamond formation. I like to place one on a plate with a point in front of me. Add about 3 tablespoons of the mixture in the center, closest to you. Fold the wrapper over the mixture, and gently pull or roll back towards you to tighten the egg roll. Once pulled back, roll forward a turn or two, then fold over the sides, tucking underneath the roll. Brush the egg mixture onto about 1 inch of the top diamond area, the roll to seal.
- Your goal here is to have a tight seal as you do not want cheese and hot oil to interfere. That will not be good, trust me. This video sums it up if you need any reference as to how to wrap an egg roll.
- Repeat with as many wrappers or egg rolls that you would like to make. Mine yielded about 12 pizza egg rolls.
- Now go check on your oil and temperature. You want your oil to be around 375 degrees. Once your oil is heated, carefully add a few egg rolls to the preheated oil. You do not want to overcrowd the pizza egg rolls.
- These will fry up in a matter of minutes so keep an eye on them. Once a deep golden brown, remove with your slotted spoon or spider and place onto a wire rack, or paper lined plate to remove any excess oil.
- Repeat until completed.
- To serve, you can shower the egg rolls with finely grated parmesan cheese, and a bowl full of heated marinara.
- The texture of the egg roll wrapper lent itself perfectly with these pizza egg rolls. I'll be honest, I devoured two of them right away and had to back away from them as they were that great. My wife who seemed a bit skeptical fell in love with them, as well as did my son and daughter.