Scallion Pancakes Taste
Most people when they think of pancakes, they only think breakfast, maple syrup on the top. I did too, but one day my roommate introduced me to Chinese scallion pancakes.
Scallion pancakes aren’t sweet. I’m not sure if they qualify as breakfast food. What they are is savory, fatty, and flavorful. The best way to describe the taste is to imagine a thick sour cream and onion potato chip, and that’s about as close as I can think of.
Ingredients
Next, let’s talk about the ingredients. A great part about these is their simplicity. Flour, water, vegetable oil, scallions, chives, and salt. In all likeliness, you already have all of these in your pantry, except for the fresh scallions and chives. How much are these? Scallions are 50 cents at Walmart right now. Chives are $1.98. So, it’s a real possibility for most of you to make these for less than $3. That is crazy!
The Process
No, I’m not talking about Joel Embiid. We can talk about my thoughts on teams tanking and it’s long term effect on competitive sports later. What does making scallion pancakes entail? It’s not much harder than making a regular loaf of bread. First, we fry some of our excess chives and scallions in the oil. Then you add this extra flavorful oil to our dough mixture. The only other tricky part is the special folding process. The best way to describe it is like an accordion. The rest of it comes pretty naturally. Roll the dough flat, and fry it in a skillet with oil til crispy on both sides.
I still am not sure what to classify it as. Dinner? Appetizer? A snack? I’m not sure, but why not all them. It’s tasty enough, that’s for sure. Best of all? This is really cheap to make. You probably have most of the ingredients already. You just need to go down to the market for like, $3 worth of scallions and chives (hey I was right when I guessed this). Truly a college student’s best friend.
If you aren’t ready yet and want IHOP pancakes, this might be what you were looking for. Or if you want something else deep fried, might I recommend my crab rangoon recipe?
Scallion Pancakes
Ingredients
- 2 cups flour
- ¾ cup warm water
- ⅓ cup vegetable oil
- ¼ cup flour
- 1 cup scallions sliced
- ½ cup chives sliced
- ½ tsp salt
Instructions
- Mix 2 cups of flour and the warm water in a mixing bowl.
- Put vegetable oil on your hands instead of flour. Then, knead the dough for 5 minutes. Set aside and let the dough rest for 30 minutes.
- Cut up about 1 cup of scallions (only the green part) and 1/2 cup of chives.
- Put the oil in a large skillet and heat up on medium heat. Add the unused portions of the scallions (white part) and any leftover chives you didn't slice. Fry until the veggies are brown to release their flavor into the oil. Take the veggies out and discard them.
- Let the oil cool down for 3 minutes, then pour into a heat resistant bowl with your 1/4 cup of flour. Mix them together .
- Cut the dough from earlier into 4 equal portions. Oil up a rolling pin and roll the portions flat.
- Brush the flat dough with the oil, flour mixture from earlier.
- Sprinkle 1/4 of your scallions and chives onto each portion.
- Slowly fold the dough forward and back onto it self, 1 inch at a time, so that it resembles an accordion.
- Flatten the accordion dough, then roll it like a sleeping bag from both ends, meeting in the middle, so you have what looks like 2 rolled up sleeping bags.
- Take one sleeping bag, put it on top of the other, and flatten it into a disc. Roll it until it is pancake then. Repeat this process 3 more times for the other portions of dough.
- Add vegetable oil to a skillet and heat it up. Fry the pancakes, 1 at a time, 4 minutes each side, or until it is your desired level of crispy. Enjoy!
Ok, the video was super helpful for understanding the rolling technique! I totally did not get the two sleeping bags thing until I watched.
Yeah, the rolling felt impossible to explain with words haha