Korean Chive Pancakes (bu chu jeon – 부추전) and Onion Dipping Sauce

Posted on April 16, 2014 by Erickukin

The Korean pancake family contains many members and today we will be making a very tasty version. This is perhaps my third favorite Korean pancake after the kimchi pancake (김치전) and zucchini pancake (호박부침개). This food is the perfect dish after a hike in the mountains, paired with some makkoli or other alcohol, and shared with friends. This is a very common drinking side dish (an ju – 안주) and even at home, it’s hard to eat it without at least a glass of wine on the side. So, grab some friends, get a good conversation going, grab some drinks, sit down, and enjoy this wonderful dish!

This can also be considered banchan. Cut it up in squares about 1.5 inches wide and put it in the refrigerator. It is not “meet” banchan meaning that you will have to eat it quicker and it will go bad in about a week.

Time:

Prep Time: 10-15 minutes
Cooking Time: 15-25 minutes
Total Time: ~25-40 minutes

WARNING: This recipe doesn’t include amounts for most of the ingredients. Try it out. Adjust to taste. Also, I recommend making the dipping sauce first and letting it sit while you are making the pancake so the flavors can mix.

Ingredients: (see the bottom of page for Dipping Sauce recipe)

1 bunch of Korean Chives (aka Chinese Chives) (bu chu – 부추)
1 sweet onion (yang pa – 양파)
1-2 carrots (dang geun – 당근)
1/2 lbs bay scallops* (ga ri bi – 가리비)
3 cups Korean frying flour** (bu chim gae ga ru – 부침개가루)
4 cups water (mul – 물)
1 egg (gyae ran – 계란)
Optional: A bit of Sweet Rice Flour (chap ssal ga ru – 찹쌀가루)
Optional: Chopped spicy pepper for heat
Optional: Other veggies such as mushrooms, zucchini, etc.
MODIFICATIONS:
*Actually the original recipe calls for sliced squid. If you can find it, use it. It adds a chewiness that gives the pancake great character. However, any seafood will work here, we chose bay scallops due to our preferences. To make the dish vegetarian, you may leave it out.
**If you don’t have or can’t find this, don’t worry. Korean frying flour is just flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder…and some other minor flavorings. We often use plain flour and add a pinch of salt, 2-3 pinches of sugar, and a pinch of baking powder.

For more information about ingredients please see my ingredient page for detailed information

Categories:

Drinking Sides – Anju
Banchan
Quick and Easy
Not Hot-At-All or Spicy
Exotic Ingredients
Vegetarian
On the cheap

When one says chives they often think of green onions or a flavor of potato chips. This are not American chives, which are often tubular. One can possibly find them in an American grocery however but you would probably have better luck in your local Asian grocery. You will be able to tell the difference because Korean Chives (most likely called Chinese Chives in the grocery store) are flat not tubular. They look like a bundle of grass. It should be wrapped and about 1.5-2 feet long.
They are not cleaned when you buy them. So you will need to work a bit to clean both the tops and bottoms. This is easily accomplished by chopping of the bottom inch of the chives, and the top inch or two. But if you want to be a little more selective and think that throwing away those inches of food is regrettable (아깝다) then you can individually clean each stalk as needed. Here are a photos to show what to look for. Also make sure you rise them after cleaning.
Peel the carrot and onion, wash them both, and place your scallops in water and let them soak until you need to add them. A note about the onions here. You should be using vidalia onions or other sweet onion. It’s more true to the flavor to Korean onions. The onions in the front of the picture are for the dipping sauce (see below)
Cut the chives into pieces about 1.5-2 inches long and place them into a big bowl
Next julienne the carrots. Here I cheat because I find julienning just to tedious. I use my peeler as a knife to cut the carrots into strips as think as the peeler can make them, then I julienne those strips. This picture shows all the stages. These pieces should end up about 2 inches long as well.
Chop the onions so that it results in long thin strips like the rest of the ingredients (you’re seeing a trend here?)
Put everything into the bowl. Make sure to drain the scallops first. I often put a pinch of salt in at this stage and mix it around. The salt starts to soften and “kill” the veggies even before you fry them.
Now it’s time to make the mix. Mix equal parts of the flour mix with water. Prepare the egg. *OPTIONAL: add a few tablespoons (I like even more than that) of Sweet Rice Flour to the mix. This will give the pancake the crispy/chewy combination.
At this point it’s a good idea to start up your frying pan, although you could do this a few steps back as well. It’s always important to make sure you don’t start frying with cold oil on a cold frying pan. Drop some olive oil (grapeseed oil it better if you have it) on the pan and let it sit on medium-high (maybe a 6 on a 1-10 scale) heat for 5 minutes or so.
Now it’s time to start frying. Put 2/3 of the flour/water mix in with the veggies and mix it well. Leave about 1/3 out in another bowl as shown below. Then start frying. Place the mixture on the frying pan just think enough so that you don’t see any pan. Mine usually ends up being about 1/2 inch think. You can make smaller pancakes or huge ones. After you place the mix on the frying pan, push it down a bit, and then use the mix you reserved to fill in the gaps where you think it needs a little extra bond. It’ll be a lot of veggies and a little flour mix…it’s okay, it turns out super tasty. Although, here IS a point where you’ll have to adjust the amounts as needed. Fry one up first, if it doesn’t hold together well, feel free to make up some more flour/water mix and add it to it. Or just add flour if it’s too runny. Or just add water if it’s too think, you get the picture.
Flip when ready. Let it brown a bit. Here’s a picture of a large, whole-pan pancake we made. It’s about the right amount of done. But this to can be adjusted to preference.
That’s it! Enjoy by pulling it apart with chopsticks or hands, dipping it in the sauce (shown below) and eating!

Onion Dipping Sauce

Ingredients: (please read the ingredients page for information especially on vinegar)

3 TBSP Soy Sauce (gan jang – 간장)
1 TBSP Vinegar (shik cho – 식초)
1/4 sweet onion (yang pa – 양파)
3 TBSP water (mul – 물)

Put the onions in a bowl
Add soy sauce
Add vinegar and water. Let sit at least 30 minutes (overnight is better). The you will know it’s ready when the onion become a little waterlogged in the edges and start to absorb the soy sauce/vinegar mixture. The longer you let it sit, the more the onions will absorb.

Do you have comments? Suggestions? Questions? Leave them below and I will answer right away!~

Simmered Burdock Root (oo eong cho rim – 우엉조림)

Posted on May 15, 2012 by Erickukin

This is one of my favorite banchan, and it’s a flavor that you will find in many places across the Korean cuisine. It’s a little sweet, a little salty, and a little nutty. This vegetable is not normally seen on your average American dining room table, but it is healthy and tasty. The root is often used in various natural medicines as well. Cutting the root into fine pieces is the hardest part and can get a bit time consuming, but after that it’s just watching the pit simmer and stirring once in a while.

Time:

Prep Time: 30-40 minutes
Cooking Time: 30-40 minutes
Total Time: ~60-80 minutes

Ingredients:

1.5 pounds of burdock root – about 3 long roots (oo eong – 우엉)
1/2 cup water (mul – 물)
2 tsp cooking vinegar (shik cho – 식초)
8 Tbsp Soy Sauce (gan jang – 간장)
5 Tbsp Korean cooking wine (mat sul – 맛술)
5 Tbsp Simple Sugar or oligosaccharide (o li go dang – 올리고당)
2 Tbsp of granulated sugar (seol tang – 설탕)
1 Tbsp of Sesame oil (cham ki ruem – 참기름)
1 Tbsp of Sesame Seed Salt (ggae so geum – 깨소금)

For more information about ingredients please see my ingredient page for detailed information

Categories:

Long-term Banchan
Sweet & Savory
Not Hot-At-All
Exotic Ingredients
Vegetarian

When you buy the root it should look something like this. Rough and like a giant carrot. It will probably be wrapped in the store, and the inside should be a little moist when you cut it.
Cut the root into pieces roughly 6-10 inches long.
Using a hand peeler, take the skin off each piece. It should come off rather easily.
They will look a bit like this when you are finished
Take the pieces and cut them into smaller segments about 3 inches long.
The cut the pieces in half.
Take each half and cut them in half again. Sometime they are a bit hard to deal with at this stage. But the skinnier you can cut them, the more flavorful they will be.
Take the individual pieces and cut them into small skinny strips like this. I find that it is easier to do this A. With another person helping so it doesn’t take so long and B. in an assembly line type method: cut them all in half, then all in half again, then all into strips.
Meanwhile, have a large bowl that you fill with a bit of water and put the amount of vinegar in. I would put them in the water to soak as soon as you get them cut. They should soak for about 10 minutes after the last one is in there. The root has a tendency to be a bit tart and the vinegar bath reduces this a bit.
After soaking, rinse all the vinegar water off the pieces.
At this point you can make your marinade in a separate bowl using the sugar, simple sugar, cooking wine, and soy sauce. Remember the sesame oil always comes last so don’t put it in now.
Put some oil in your frying pan. It needs to be a frying device that has a lid.
Put the cut burdock root in and fry for about 5 minutes in a medium heat.
Add the half cup of water
And the marinade.
Cover and let it simmer, just barely steaming, with the lid on for about 30 minutes. Stirring every few minutes.
At this point you want to check it. Depending on your heat you may have to adjust a few factors. You may have to add a bit of water if it starts to run out before the 30 minutes is up. After 30 minutes, if there is some liquid still on the bottom, open the lid and continue to stir and simmer until the water is gone. The root really takes on the flavor at the end, as the last of the marinade is being soaked into the root, so be sure to keep stirring at this point.
Not, when it is finished, turn off the heat and add the sesame seeds and sesame oil.
Try it out. It should be a tad bit crunchy but at the same time kind of soft. It will get a bit softer the longer you keep it in the fridge don’t worry.
Store in a good sealed container, and enjoy with rice!

Do you have comments? Suggestions? Questions? Leave them below and I will answer right away!~

Spicy Red-Pepper Pickles (oh ee ji mu chim – 오이지무침)

Posted on May 7, 2012 by Erickukin

Enjoy your rice with a delectable banchan that is a tasty mix of sweet, sour, nutty, and spicy. This is one of my favorite side dishes and it is quite easy to make. Start with any homemade or store-bought pickles, and in a few minutes you will be ready to eat the transformed product.

Time:

Prep Time: 10-15 minutes
Waiting Time: 30 minutes
Total Time: ~40-45 minutes

Ingredients:

1 – 24oz can of dill pickles (oh ee gi – 오이지)
2 Tbsp of crushed red pepper (go chu ka ru – 고추가루)
1 Tbsp of granulated sugar (seol tang – 설탕)
4 Tbsp of finely diced green onions (da jin pa – 다진 파 optional)
1 Tbsp of minced garlic (da jin ma neul – 다진 마늘)
1 Tbsp of Sesame oil (cham ki ruem – 참기름)
2 tsp of Sesame Seed Salt (ggae so geum – 깨소금)

For more information about ingredients please see my ingredient page for detailed information

Categories:

Long-term Banchan
Sweet & Sour
Mildly Spicy
Quick & Easy
On the Cheap

Just start with you average can of dill pickles. Open them up and, unless you have a good reason to save the pickle juice, toss it down the drain.
Slice them up into about the size you see here.
Throw them back in the container they came with and soak them in cool water for 30 minutes. In general, pickles from the store are to salty for this dish, if you have homemade pickles that are less salty, you can decrease the time to compensate. You don’t want them flavorless, you want a little salty and vinegary flavor left, but you don’t want it to be so strong to overpower the ingredients that you are going to add later.
Next, you need to press the pickles dry. You can use a cheese cloth, or, as I did not have a cheese cloth in this case, you can use a clean and sanitized (boil for 5-10 minutes after washing) face towel. If the pickles are too wet, the ingredients won’t stick to them very well.
Next add the crushed red pepper, sugar, minced garlic, finely chopped green onions (I skipped that ingredient in this batch), sesame seed oil, and sesame seed salt.
NOTE: If you like a little more vinegary flavor, you can, at this stage, add a little bit, perhaps 1 tsp to 1 Tbsp depending on taste.
With a cooking glove, mix the ingredients until evenly distributed.
NOTE: As this is a long-term banchan, it is very important not to contaminate it, which is why we use the gloves. Even the littlest bit of bacteria at this stage will reduce the shelf-life considerably.
Enjoy with rice along with some other of your favorite banchan!