Scallion Pancake Recipe

3100 m above Churchill, Canada, 2:54 Shanghai Time

While my laptop still has the battery, I’m gonna write down the Scallion Pancakes recipe. I’ve never written a recipe before, so forgive me if I leave something out or get too detailed or obvious or something.

You’ll need:

2 cups sifted flour

1 cup boiling water

scallions (a recipe I found said 9 oz., but I find you usually need more. A solid handful of sprigs. I wanna say 4 or 5 good sized sprigs. Chop up a lot more than you think you need, just to be safe, especially if you’re making a couple batches of pancakes).

Sesame oil

Regular oil (Canola? I don’t know what’s considered “straight-up” in the whole oil biz. I use canola, and that’s how I’ll refer to this ingredient. Go ahead and trust your judgment on this one.)

A pinch of salt (although I don’t think they’re traditionally made with salt, so use very little or none at all. You might find it changes the eventual texture to your liking, but I tend not to use salt)

Step 1: Dough

Taking 2 cups sifted (sifting is important! Otherwise texture during kneading sucks) flower, mixing it with a cup of boiling (yes, boiling) water, mix in bowl. Use a spoon or something at first, then once it cools down start kneading with your hands. The 2:1 flower:water ratio is pretty good, but you may find you need to add a little more of one or the other. Don’t start adding extra ingredients until after a solid 5-10 minutes of kneading, because most of the texture problems can be solved by just working it some more. You’ll want the dough to be not very sticky, somewhat springy, and only somewhat firm. Cover and let this rest for an hour.

Step 2: Scallions

Chop ‘em up. Make them small pieces. I sort of suggest cutting down the length of the scallions, so the pieces are extra small. If they’re too big, (and the scallions are sufficiently fresh, which they should be), the scallions will poke through the very thin dough in later steps, and will make for weird handling and mildly unattractive appearance. Set aside.

Interim step: Oil

You’re going to be using oil in a few different ways throughout, which will be explained when I get to it, but you will always be using a mixture of the sesame and canola oils. You’re going to need about 1 part sesame oil for every 2 parts canola oil. The sesame oil is a lot stronger, and you want to dilute it some.

Step 3: Flattening 101

Now that you have your rested dough, (I always flip the plate upside down and let it fall to see how good the dough is. The longer it stays stuck, the better, but it has to fall of the plate cleanly, in one piece.) flatten it. You’ll need a very big surface for this, so plan accordingly. The coffee maker tends to get moved out of the way in our house.  I used to put flour on the surface, but I find a good coat of oil does a much better job. If you can afford to, definitely go for it. Clean up slightly worse, but the result is much better on many different levels. Use a regular rolling pin and flatten as thoroughly as possible. Seriously. We’re talking just-before-if-not-see-through thin. Very very thin. You’re going to be folding this over onto itself a lot and flattening that as thin as possible, so you’ll need this to be very thin in order to work with it. It’s gonna be big, as a result. Again, big surface. Okay, anyway. Put some oil on it. And I say “some,” because I don’t know how much. It’s probably about 2-3 table spoons, but maybe a bit less. Enough to coat it well. Toss on your scallions, making sure to cover them evenly across the whole surface (you’ll begin to get a sense of scale during these few steps). This is 3-4 generous handfuls. Very little salt, if you feel so compelled. You won’t taste it anyway, I don’t think.

Step 4: Flattening 298

This is where things start to get tricky (mostly from the recipe-writers perspective, but also on your end). I’m going to choose my words very carefully, and be as descriptive as possible so that you can understand everything. Roll up sleeves. Wipe sweat from furrowed brow. Grab the dough at the end closest to you, and lift this side up from the surface (this is where using oil to coat the surface will pay off). You’re going to fold/roll this edge on itself, over and over again, coiling it up into a long roll, sort or sausage or tube-like. A picture of me doing this can be found 2 blog entries down. I should’ve used more scallions in that batch, I think. The sides are lacking. You’re going to end up with a big, thick, long coil. Pick it up and put it in the center of your surface. Flatten the ends, so scallions and things don’t get smushed out later on. During the last step, you didn’t want it to stick together before you were ready. Now you’re ready for it to stick together, so you’re going to sprinkle flour all over, friction-ing it up after all of that oil. Pay special attention to the seam; pinch and squish as necessary, but make sure not to tear it. Grab one of the ends of the coil, and twist, keeping it all flat on the counter. The original twisting action is akin to turning a doorknob; grab and rotate the wrist. You’re going to make another coil out of the tube, eventually looking sort of like a cinnamon bun. Try to get the seam on the inside, so it is reinforced by the curling. Curl it and cinnamon-bun it tightly, but again, make sure not to tear it. The end result can be seen in the blog post 2 entries down. Put the end of the tube that you didn’t start with, now on the outside, firmly underneath the bun, as shown. You’re going to be flattening this entire thing, and you don’t want it to uncoil, which this bit has the tendency to do.  You may want to work this bun so that it becomes a single unit, but don’t overdo it. Just start the flattening process with your hands, and then move on to the rolling pin once its started. Flatten as thoroughly as reasonable. You’ll be able to get this to about the size that the dough as when originally flattened, believe it or not. Be gentle but firm, so scallions don’t poke through. Cut into manageable, pan-sized slices. Nicely done. Hard part is over.

Step 5: Fry

Take that oil mixture, (1/3 sesame oil, 2/3 canola oil), and put it on a hot frying pan. Toss on your pancake pieces. When frying, keep as flat as possible. The dough tends to get little air-pockets in it, and has a very bumpy texture. If you don’t keep it flat, by actively pressing it down, there will be lots of raised, burn-y bits, and a lot of recessed, not very cooked bits. You want to homogenize. Flip when brown. They go pretty fast once the frying pan gets hot. Drain on some paper towels for a bit, and then keep them in an oven set on low to keep warm. (duh). Serve immediately. Makes a bunch. Enough for 5 people to go back for more.