asian-cuisine
The final challenge for a recent "Master Chef" was to make spring rolls. It seemed to me that they were really making egg rolls, like I've seen at any restaurant I've ever been to — Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, etc.
What is the difference between a spring roll and an egg roll?
I've had excellent results using my vacuum flask cooker to do slow-cooked eggs. Also known as 63° eggs because they're usually sous vide cooked to 63° C. These eggs are a feature at fancy restaurants all over New York. Here's a picture of a dish from Eleven Madison Park:
from my favorite English-language Japanese cooking blog, justhungry.com
Provided you have the equipment (vacuum cooker, thermometer) and your tap water is hot enough, these eggs could not be easier. You do them without even turning on the stove.
I have a bottle of San-J Tamari (black label) in my fridge and the back reads:
Tamari is a premium soy sauce made with more soybeans than ordinary soy sauce giving it a richer, smoother, more complex taste. Tamari has more flavor enhancing properties than salt. Add 1 tsp. (320 mg sodium) instead of tsp. salt (590 mg sodium) to reduce sodium intake. Stir-fry or marinate poultry, meat fish and vegetables. Add 1-2 tsp. to perk up sauces, soups, gravies and casseroles.
In my experience, I use a little less tamari when substituting it for regular soy sauce. As Sean mentioned, it's definitely a bit stronger than regular soy sauce. I eyeball most of the time, but I'd say I use 1/2 to 3/4 portion of tamari when substituting it for regular soy sauce.
I reach for the tamari when I want a bit more of a complex flavor on something plain like rice - when the soy sauce is to be the star of the dish, essentially. I tend to use regular soy sauce when mixing into a larger homemade sauce or where the soy sauce flavor will blend into the background because the recipe calls for so many other strong ingredients.
Oh, and tamari seems to add a bit of an almost "smoky" flavor, it seems.
Best Answer
春卷 (Chūnjuǎn, Spring rolls) are julienned vegetables, sometimes with a bit of noodles, sometimes with a bit of minced meat, wrapped with a flour dough skin and pan- or deep-fried. They are a filled roll.
You can see the different varieties by country here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_roll
Spring roll:
鸡蛋卷 (Jīdàn juǎn, Egg rolls) are many different things around the world. In Chinese communities, these typically refer to a sweet biscuit type roll, of hollow flaky egg pastry (not filled.) However, there is also another variety (common in American Chinese cuisine) where a flour dough wrap is filled with "pork, shrimp, or chicken, adding cabbage, carrots, bean sprouts and other vegetables, and then deep fried." In the American Chinese respect, I believe it is very similar to a Spring roll really, although the flour dough looks thicker and of a different composition than a typical Spring roll (the dough bubbles when deep-fried, with Spring roll skin it does not.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_roll
Sweet egg roll:
American Chinese egg roll: