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Photo by Holly A. Heyser
Long-time readers of this space know I have an obsession with alliums: onions, garlic leeks and such. This time of year I am harvesting huge numbers of our local wild onion, the tri-cornered leek. Mostly I use them as a substitute for ye olde garden variety green onion or scallion. They play harmony to whatever the dish’s melody happens to be.
This dish is different. Here the onion is the star, the main flavoring and textural element. It is a fantastic way to celebrate the ephemeral bonanza of spring.
Chinese scallion pancakes are, as you might be able to tell from the picture, not really pancakes. They’re flatbreads. Really, really good flatbreads. I’d never eaten them before I made this recipe, but I’d eaten something very close: An Indian paratha, a very similar flatbread I always get when I am at Indian restaurants. I am pretty sure there is a cultural link in there somewhere.
Eating one is not really like eating bread. Yes, they are kinda-sorta bready, but these pancakes are chewier, you get a little juicy crunch from the onions. and the aroma of sesame oil and onion is so wonderful it’ll make your eyes roll back in your head. Like my venison potstickers, this is one of those “Oops! I ate them all. Again.” kind of foods.
How to eat them? By themselves they are great, but they become sublime with a sweet-spicy dipping sauce. Think Sriracha with a spoonful of honey in it. Oh yesss…
Photo by Holly A. Heyser
Scallion Pancakes
Making these pancakes requires a little bit of skill, but I will walk you through step by step below. Any sort of green onion will work, from regular green onions to chives, garlic chives, ramps or any wild onion. I use tri-cornered leeks here.
It also really helps to have a tortilla press to quickly flatten the pancakes, but you can certainly use a normal rolling pin.
These are best served warm, but are almost as good at room temperature. They will keep in the fridge, wrapped in a paper towel, for a day or two in the fridge.
Makes 8 pancakes.
Prep Time: 1 hour
Cook Time: 10 minutes
- 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 cup boiling water
- Sesame oil for brushing, about 2 to 3 tablespoons
- 2 cups chopped green onions, ramps, etc
- 1 tablespoon salt
- Peanut or other vegetable oil for frying
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1. Put the flour in a large bowl and make a well in the center. Bring the water to a boil, then turn off the heat. When the water stops bubbling, pour it into the well in the flour. Stir together with a fork until you get a shaggy mass. Wipe the goopy flour off the fork and knead the mass into an elastic dough, which should take about 3 to 5 minutes. Put the dough into a plastic bag or wrap it in plastic wrap and let the dough sit for 30 minutes.
2. Take the dough out and cut it into four pieces. Put three of them back into the plastic bag. For a work surface, I use a baking sheet flipped over that I’ve lightly oiled with vegetable oil. Roll out the piece of dough into a roughly rectangular shape; it doesn’t need to be precise.
3. Paint the dough with the sesame oil, then sprinkle with about a half teaspoon of salt. Sprinkle chopped scallions over the dough generously, leaving about 1/2 inch free space on all sides of the dough.
Photo by Holly A. Heyser
4. Roll the dough into a tight log starting from the longer side of the rectangle.
Photo by Holly A. Heyser
5. Slice the log in half and pinch close the ends of the log to keep the scallions from spilling out.
Photo by Holly A. Heyser
6. Take one half of the log and roll it tightly into a snail.
Photo by Holly A. Heyser
7. Flatten the snail with the palm of your hand. Cut up a Ziploc bag or somesuch into large plastic squares that will cover your tortilla press. Place the flattened snail on one piece of plastic, cover it with another.
Photo by Holly A. Heyser
Photo by Holly A. Heyser
8. Squash the dough with the tortilla press, or roll it out with a rolling pin to a thickness of 1/8 to 1/4 quarter of an inch.
9. Now you need to fry the pancakes in a little hot oil. I fry and press as I go, keeping the finished pancakes in a tortilla warmer lined with paper towels. You could also put them on a baking sheet in an oven set to 200°F. But if you are a beginner, roll out all your pancakes first.
10. I fry the pancakes in a large saute pan with about a tablespoon of vegetable oil. I prefer peanut oil because it’s used a lot in Chinese cooking. Lard is another good choice. Get the oil hot before you drop the pancake in and cook for about 2 minutes per side, just until you get a little browning on them.
Serve by themselves, with soy sauce or with a sweet-spicy dipping sauce.
More Vegetarian Recipes
More Recipes for Greens
Photo by Holly A. Heyser
My mother (who is from Beijing) always makes this for me whenever I come home to visit. She is an expert. Your method is super authentic, bravo. But might I suggest two improvements?
First, we have found that using a wetter the dough makes the final result a lot better. It fries more uniformly and comes out flaking for some reason, although it does makes it more difficult to work with. You also have to work faster, because otherwise the layers from the rolling and flattening start to mush together faster. But I think it’s worth it.
The other thing we usually do when making this is to fry the onion very briefly in hot oil first, the mix it with the sesame oil and salt to format a sort of paste. That way the onion becomes soft and runs less a chance of puncturing the dough layers when you roll and flatten it. Also sometimes we use a 50/50 blend of red onion and green onion.
Anyways, that’s just how my family does. Great, authentic recipe though! Thanks.
Awesome…I love scallion pancakes…have you checked out Serious Eats method from Kenji? Very similar to yours, but he does a few turns with the dough, and only sprinkles on the scallions after 2nd…gives it more layers for the laminate dough…I’ve tried it, and it comes out great
http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2011/04/extra-flaky-scallion-pancakes-recipe.html
Great recipe. We did this two years ago with ramps leaves (Allium tricoccum), using the Serious Eats method. I have never eaten Chinese-style onion pancakes before, but we make these often in the spring now. They definitely do not last long!
http://the3foragers.blogspot.com/2011/04/ramps-pancakes-chinese-style.html
A very different pancake, but one which makes the green onion even more of a star, is the Korean pa-jeon. This is an eggy pancake with long lengths of scallions or chives and, optionally, seafood. It’s also much quicker to make. I highly recommend it!
These look fab. I can’t wait for wild garlic to appear in the woods, would love to try it in these. I’m wondering if my Egyptian walking onions, a perennial veggie which are just sending out lots of spring onion like shoots, might be good in these too?
My wife, Joungmin, says she’d like to have the opportunity to teach you how to make a Korean version, one of which is haemul pajeon or seafood “pancake;” featuring squid, mussels, scallions, and spicy green gochu peppers!
Yum, these look amazing. The pictures are gorgeous.
Hank,
You REALLY need to teach a class on how to pick/where to find wild edibles. Rapini, I know. Barba di prete, I know. Funghi, I know. Would like to learn a few others.
-Lou
Hi Hank – thanks for this recipe – I look forward to trying it, if spring ever arrives to New England (I still have a foot of snow in my yard in Arlington, MA, on this, the second day of Spring).
Anyway – I would like to take note that this recipe only calls for the “upper” portion of the wild onion/leek plants (not the bulb), which I was glad to see.
Here in Massachusetts, I’ve observed first-hand the damage to wild leek (aka ramp) patches and the sensitive, “rich woods” habitats they grow in, primarily due to large-scale, irresponsible digging up of ramps for commercial purposes.
Here are a couple links that go into more details about this:
http://boston.eater.com/archives/2012/03/29/post-12.php
http://www.watershedpost.com/2011/ramps-too-trendy
But here’s the good news – you don’t have to dig up a ramp to enjoy its fine flavor. As you know, the leaves are delicious on their own and can be used many ways, including this “wild scallion” pancake recipe.
I encourage this sustainable harvesting method for ramps: pick only one leaf/plant, leave the remaining leaf or leaves attached to the bulb, and leave the bulb in the ground. That way you (and others) can return to the same ramp patch year after year without harming it or its habitat.
So, Hank, thanks for providing a recipe calling for ramps that uses the leaves + stems only, that is compatible with my suggested “no dig” method of sustainable harvesting.