Scallion pancakes are a famous delicious appetizer in Chinese culture! These are super flaky, crispy, yet chewy on the inside. They may seem daunting to make but they are actually super simple to make at home and only require 5 ingredients.
All your need are basic pantry ingredients and 5 ingredients total. These do take a little time to make, but it’s fun to make with the whole family and time goes by much faster! Once you get the technique down you can whip these scallion pancakes out in less than an hour!
Time Saving Trick!
If you don’t have all that time and patients to homemake some dough, I have a shortcut scallion pancake recipe that uses wonton wrappers are the “dough”! They turned out super crispy and delicious as well!
I’ve been trying to stay on a healthier diet track, however when it come to these I can never say no! If you want to make these a little healthier you can use less oil per pancake.
Other Popular Asian Recipes
I love sharing recipes from my culture and I have many on my blog. Some of my most popular ones are my teriyaki chicken dumplings, vegan springs rolls, chili oil wontons, and chicken rice paper dumplings.
Key ingredients for these traditional scallion pancakes:
- Flour
- I used organic unbleached all purpose flour for the dough and the scallion oil. The flour makes the scallion oil thicker which makes the pancakes chewier.
- Warm water
- I highly highly recommend using warm water to keep the dough as soft as possible!
- Scallions
- You’re gonna want a lot of these! The whites are good to fry in the oil to make the scallion oil and the greens are god for sprinkling on top! When cutting the scallions I recommend slicing the scallion in half long ways so that the green onion pieces are smaller!
- Olive oil
- I choose to use olive oil because it adds some nice flavor and it is much healthier than the traditional canola or vegetable oil.
Traditional Scallion Pancakes
Ingredients
Dough
- 2 cups All purpose flour
- 1 cup + 1 tbsp warm water
Scallion infused oil
- 2 stalks scallions
- 2 tsps salt
- 1 tbsp all purpose flour
- ⅓ cup olive oil
Instructions
- In a large bowl, mix together the flour and warm water using a wooden spoon or chopsticks. Once the flour and water have been sufficiently combined, get in there with your hands and knead the dough into a ball shape. Let the dough rest for at least 30 minutes.
- While the dough is resting make the scallion infused oil. Start by dicing up the scallion stalks. Heat up the olive oil. You know the oil is ready when bubbles start to form around a chopstick. Add in the scallion whites and let that fry for 1 minute. Let the oil cool slightly and pour over the flour and the green parts of the scallion. Sprinkle over the salt and mix everything until combined.
- Cut the dough into 6 equal pieced. Take one piece and roll it into a very thin rectangle. Drizzle on about 1 tbsp of the scallion oil, and spread out all over the rectangle. Sprinkle on some more chopped scallions. Fold the long end of the rectangle to the middle of the rectangle, and the same with the other side so that both ends meet in the middle. Now fold it in half long ways. It should be a strip at this point. Apply some more scallion oil along the strip.
- Take one end of the strip and roll it all the to the other end. Take the end of the strip and tuck it in the bottom of the roll. Set the roll aside to let it rise for an additional 15 minutes.
- Once the rolls are done rising, use a rolling pin to flatten the roll into a pancake shape.
- Heat up a frying pan and add some olive oil. Place the scallion pancake onto the pan and cook for 3-5 minutes. Flip and cook for an additional 3 minutes.
