Pickled Veggies and Cream Cheese Roll Ups • Little Nomads Recipes (2024)

Pickled Veggies and Cream Cheese Roll Ups is a fantastic vegetarian appetizer, great to bring to a potluck or get-together. They are made of chive cream cheese, pickled carrots, and onion with crunchy cucumber and alfalfa sprouts. Such a smooth, tasty bite!

I first ate a similar pickled veggies and cream cheese Sandwich on an Air France plane. I remember thinking the marinated veggies mixed with cream cheese was a lovely idea. It was a standard sandwich on the plane, but it works wonderfully in a rolled-up tortilla wrap, too! They are a real crowd-pleaser, those vegetarian pinwheels filled with flavours and colours. The center is filled with crunchy cucumber and alfalfa sprouts to give it a nice bite. It is a simple idea: these cream cheese roll ups make excellent snacks for the kids, appetizers for potluck or get-togethers, or a simple lunch or picnic.

Vegetarian Pinwheels

These bites are suitable for vegetarians. You have a vegan pinwheel if you replace the cream cheese with a vegan version. I love a dynamic bite like these where this crunchy, sweet and sour mix of veggies counterbalances the smooth cheese! It’s simply a divine combination. Do you like peppers? Well, go ahead and add some in the center of the pinwheels, or any other micro greens would bring in this lovely crunch.

Cream Cheese Spread

For the cream cheese spread, I’ve used a lot of chives; I think the spicy side of chives makes the whole bite richer! But if you are not a big fan of chive, you could substitute for a lovely parsley, dill or nothing at all, and it would still make great roll up appetizers. I used a full-fat basic cream cheese, but a light version would also work well here if you count your calorie intake. To give the Cream Cheese Roll Ups a little more tang, I added a squeeze of half a lemon, but this is optional.

The Pickled Veggies

I made the marinade the way I do my Banh Mi Sandwiches: by mixing half/half rice vinegar and maple syrup and a tad of soy sauce (tamari or fish sauce). This makes wonders in a sandwich! You could even add a touch of hot chillies in the marinade if you like a little heat. The carrot is cut into tiny sticks, which you can use with an instrument I use in the video (see below) or a simple cheese grater or mandoline. The veggies must be marinated in this juice for at least one hour but no longer than two. Otherwise, you’ll get super saggy veggies; we like them to hold up a bit.

Variations

For the Pickled Veggies and Cream Cheese Roll Ups marinade, you could easily substitute the rice vinegar for apple vinegar or white wine. As for the soy sauce, it is also easily exchangeable for tamari or fish sauce; it’s your salt and umami. Lastly, the maple syrup could be switched to honey or simple sugar. Depending on everyone’s pantry and taste or diet, all these options would result in a lovely sweet and sour pickled veggie mix.

The Rolling Technique

Remember, firm and thigh is what you aim for here! You can spread the cream cheese all over the tortilla wrap and the pickled veggies. The cucumber and alfalfa are sushi style, in a line on the 3/4 of the tortilla to make them in the center. You’ll want to wrap the rolls in plastic to keep the form and prevent the tortilla from drying up. One hour of refrigeration is plenty for these Pickled Veggies and Cream Cheese Roll Ups because they are creamy, therefore they hold better than let’s say a ham and cheese roll up. You can easily keep them wrapped overnight and use them when needed the next day.

Other Sandwiches

• The Best Guedille au Poulet (Chicken Salad Sandwich)
• Mini Chicken Banh Mi Sandwich
• Egg Salad Pinwheels with Bread

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