Closing in on a Great Scallion Pancake Recipe

Several years ago, I conducted my first and last effort to make scallion pancakes at home.  While my recipe write-up was pretty enthusiastic, the key flaw I identified – lack of flavor – dissuaded me from attempting this snack again.  

Then, several weeks ago, after successfully attempting many of Serious Eats Chinese recipes, I decided to give their scallion pancake recipe a go.  The Serious Eats recipe was definitely leaps and bounds better than the original recipe I tried years ago, but I will need to more properly follow the recipe frying oil and salt directions to get the result to restaurant-unhealthy perfection.

The Serious Eats dough starts much as the Ming Tsai recipe I tried years ago does – creating a hot water dough with all-purpose flour and boiling water.  After combining the dough into a cohesive ball, leave for 30 minutes to rest.

Then comes the rolling of the dough segments – this recipe creates 4 relatively large pancakes.

Unlike the Ming Tsai recipe, you coat this dough with just pure sesame oil before adding the scallions.  A sesame oil v. a sesame / canola mixture definitely adds more flavor to the final result, so it's a great improvement on my original attempt.

Unlike the Ming Tsai recipe, this recipe also calls for rolling two layers of scallions / sesame oil for each pancake, which allows for more flaky layers in the final pancakes, more even distribution of the scallions, and the addition of far more scallions.  The Serious Eats recipe calls for 2 cups of thinly sliced scallions v. the Ming Tsai recipe of just 1/2 cup for the same amount of dough.

And when the pancakes are ready, throw into a hot skillet with 1/4 cup hot oil to cook for a few minutes on each side.  We definitely skimped on the oil, which reduced the final flavor of the pancakes.  As a result, this maxim – do not skimp on the cooking oil!

And time for the final maxim – season well with kosher salt!  We initially did not do this, which also resulted in a less flavorful pancake.

So basically, just follow the Serious Eats recipe as is and you'll have a great, flaky and flavorful result!