C – Have you ever smelled cooked green onions?
It’s one of my favorite smells. I don’t know what it is about the smell. It’s magical to me. It might be nostalgic. My mom would make my favorite Vietnamese noodle dish and slather sauteed green onions all over the noodles before serving.
When I decided to make green onions pancakes for this post, I didn’t expect the magical smell to fill the house.
These amazingly flaky green onion pancakes were surprisingly easy to make.
If don’t know, I hate working with doughs. But, I do seem to be getting better at it.
These pancakes were easy to make. I couldn’t believe how well they turned out.
They were flaky and filled with lots of layers.
I loved the method in of rolling out the dough and sprinkling oil, salt and green onions. Then, rolling it into a snake.
Then, you curl the snake into a snail shape and roll it again to create the pancakes. It makes all these wonderful, tender layers.
The green onions added a great flavor. Especially when you serve it with a few dipping sauces.
For a trial run, I made my pancakes even thinner and fried them off. They were great for Chinese chicken tacos I made. They were like flour tortillas but better, since there were those lovely green onions inside them.
These pancakes are great appetizers and even greater for tacos shells.
| Dim Sum Week: Green Onion Pancakes |
- 3½ cups all purpose flour
- 1½ cups warm water
- 1 Tbsp canola oil
- 1 tsp salt
- ½ Tbsp canola oil
- a few pinches of salt
- 1½ Tbsp finely chopped spring onions (about 4 to 6 green onions overall)
- Sift flour and salt into a large bowl. Add oil. Add about 250ml of the warm water and stir with chopsticks to bring the mixture together.
- Add the rest of the water gradually until you form a slightly sticky dough. You may find that you don’t need to add all the water!
- Transfer the dough from the bowl onto a floured surface.
- Knead until smooth, about 5 minutes. Add a sprinkle of flour as you’re kneading, if you find that the dough is unmanageably sticky. But it should be a little sticky. Leaving it a little sticky and not over-kneading is important if you want to avoid tough and dry pancakes!
- Put the dough back into the bowl, cover, and allow to rest for 20 minutes.
- One of the distinctions of a good choong yeo bang is its many layers. Rolling the spring onions and oil between several layers of dough gives the pancake a scrumptious flaky texture.
- To prep for the rolling:
- Pinch off a golf ball sized piece of dough and roll into a ball.
- Place the ball onto a floured surface and press down with a floured palm.
- Roll the dough out into a squarish shape, just a few mm thick.
- Drizzle oil onto the dough and spread across the surface as evenly as possible.
- Sprinkle on salt and spring onions.
- Take the edge of the thinly rolled, spring onion topped dough closest to you and roll it up to from a thin snake.
- Grab the one end of the snake and curl the dough up into a spiral like a snail. Tuck the tail underneath and leave to rest for 10 minutes before rolling out the second time. This allow the gluten to relax a bit and making it easier for rolling out later.
- Repeat with remaining dough.
- After your snails have had time to rest, they are ready to be rolled out and fried.
- Heat a frying pan onto a low heat and add a couple of dashes of oil.
- Roll out snails into lovely circles. You should be able to see the layers and hear the squishing of the oil between the layers as you roll.
- Roll out thinly for crispy pancakes, and slightly thicker for the chewier variety. The former is great for chopping into wedges and dipping, whilst the latter is better for using as a meal-sized wrap.
- Fry until both sides are golden brown. You may want to add a little more oil between flips to ensure ultimate crispiness. Keep the pan on a low heat, as the pancakes need to cook right through.
- Serve immediately with dipping sauces.
- Enjoy!
You can make a lot and toast them in the oven or skillet for a few minutes.
They reheat crispy and delicious.
Adapted from: http://thedumplingsisters.com/2013/10/13/pancakes-china-style/