Rice-Paper Shells with Hearts of Palm, Capers, and Old Bay
Dry rice paper in hot oil puffs into a weightless shell in about a second, which is the best kitchen trick per unit of effort I know. The filling has to stay barely bound or it turns the shell to paper again.
The parts that change whether this works tonight.
These fields come from the published recipe itself. If a recipe has not separately declared an operating fact, the gap stays visible instead of being filled with a guess.
- Servings
- 16
- Timing
- 30 minutes
- Equipment
- Not separately declared
- Make-ahead
- Not separately declared
- Holding
- Not separately declared
- Leftovers
- Not separately declared
- Dietary notes
- Not separately declared
- Method map
- 12 ingredient lines · 4 method steps
Pairing
Wine — Vinho Verde or a cold lager. Mixed drink — Vodka soda with Old Bay on the rim. Teetotaler — Old Bay lemonade. Capers and celery salt want something briny and cold.
Tools
A spider or slotted spoon, because you will have roughly two seconds to get each shell out. A small deep pan — one inch of oil in a narrow pan beats a shallow pool in a wide one. A rack for draining, and a thermometer you trust.
Ingredients · swaps in parentheses
Rice-paper wrappers, neutral oil, hearts of palm, celery, capers, mayonnaise, lemon, Dijon mustard, Old Bay seasoning, butter, parsley, black pepper
Magic
Melt a tablespoon of butter, stir the Old Bay into it, and let it sit off the heat for a minute before it joins the filling. Old Bay is celery seed, paprika, and a dozen other dry things, and most of what makes it smell good is fat-soluble and simply never gets released when you shake it over a cold salad. Bloom it and the whole bowl smells like a crab boil instead of like a spice jar. Not feeling brave? Warm it in the mayonnaise instead, gently, and skip the extra fat.
Gotcha
The rice paper goes into the oil bone dry, straight from the packet. Every instinct says soak it first, because that is what you do with rice paper. Do that here and one inch of 375°F oil will erupt at you.
Dry rice paper in hot oil is one of the more startling things you can do in a home kitchen. It goes in as a stiff translucent disc and comes out about a second later as a white, blistered, wildly puffed crisp that weighs nothing. There is no batter, no coating, and no timing skill involved beyond being ready to lift it out. The starch simply gelatinizes and the trapped water flashes to steam all at once.
Makes: 16
Time: 30 minutes
Ingredients
- 8 round rice-paper wrappers
- Neutral oil, for frying
- 1 can hearts of palm, drained and chopped
- 1 celery stalk, finely chopped
- 2 tablespoons capers, chopped
- 2 tablespoons mayonnaise
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
- 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
- 1/2 teaspoon Old Bay seasoning
- 1 tablespoon butter (optional, see Magic)
- 2 tablespoons chopped parsley
- Black pepper
Method
- Halve the wrappers. Cut each rice-paper wrapper in half. A half circle curls into a shell shape as it fries; a whole one goes flat.
- Fry fast. Heat 1 inch of oil to 375°F. Fry the wrapper halves one at a time; they will puff in seconds. Lift out immediately and drain.
- Mix the filling. Combine the hearts of palm, celery, capers, mayonnaise, lemon, Dijon, Old Bay, parsley, and pepper. For the magic version, bloom the Old Bay in the melted butter first and add that to the bowl.
- Fill at the last second. Spoon the filling into the shells immediately before serving.
Frying rice paper, one at a time, quickly
One at a time is not caution, it is necessity. Two wrappers in the pan together will fuse or overlap, and the second one will be in the oil half a second too long, which is the difference between white and beige. Beige rice paper tastes burnt.
Hold the half circle with tongs and lower it in, curved edge first. It will balloon almost instantly. Give it a second, then lift, and let the shape set as it cools — you can encourage a deeper curve by draping it over the handle of a wooden spoon for a few seconds.
Keep the oil at 375°F. Too cool and the paper does not puff, it just goes hard and greasy. Too hot and it colors before it has finished expanding. Between wrappers the oil recovers fast because you are adding almost no mass, so this goes quicker than most frying jobs. Sixteen shells take about four minutes.
Salt them the moment they come out if you want, though the filling is already assertively seasoned and I usually leave them plain.
Hearts of palm, without the impersonation
Hearts of palm are here because they have a fibrous layered texture that flakes a little when chopped and a mild, faintly artichoke flavor that takes on dressing beautifully. They are not crab and this recipe is not asking you to believe they are. Chop them coarsely, into pieces you can see, rather than pulsing them into a paste, since the texture is the entire reason they were chosen.
Drain them properly and pat them dry. Canned hearts of palm carry a lot of packing liquid with a slightly tinny edge, and any of it left behind thins the mayonnaise and makes the filling weep into the shell.
Getting texture and salt right in the bowl
Celery does the crunching. Chop it very fine, finer than feels necessary, so it distributes rather than clumping into distinct celery moments. Take the strings off the outer stalk with a peeler if you are using one, or use an inner stalk and its leaves, which are tender and worth including.
Capers bring the salt, so taste before adding any more. Chop them so their brine spreads through the whole bowl. If yours are salt-packed rather than brined, rinse them well first and expect to need extra lemon.
Only two tablespoons of mayonnaise for a whole can of hearts of palm sounds miserly and is correct. This is a filling that has to sit inside a fragile shell without soaking it, so it needs to be barely bound, on the dry side of what you would want in a sandwich. If it looks glossy and loose in the bowl, it will be a puddle in five minutes.
Batching, and the five-minute rule
The filling can be made a day ahead and genuinely improves overnight as the Old Bay works through it. Do not add the parsley until serving day, though, since it goes dull and dark.
Shells can be fried up to six hours ahead and kept uncovered on a rack at room temperature. Do not put them in an airtight container while there is any warmth left in them, and do not refrigerate them at all — they pick up moisture and go from crisp to chewy, which for rice paper is a total loss rather than a slight decline.
Then the actual constraint. A filled shell is excellent for about five minutes, acceptable for ten, and disappointing after that. This is not a tray you set down. Fill six, carry them out, come back and fill six more. If that seems fussy, the compensation is that the frying and the mixing are both done well in advance, so the only thing happening during the party is spooning, and you can hold a conversation while you do it.
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