Hello! Hi everyone, Wesley here. Today we're diving back into our series dedicated to reproducing foods from my eight day trip traveling through Taipei Taiwan with a return to what I would personally classify as the single most iconic piece of cuisine in Taiwanese street food culture, which is the Taiwanese green onion pancake, or cong you bing. For those keeping track, we have in fact done more than a handful of recipes circling around this dish, including the Taiwan taco, the shanghai scallion pancake, the deep-fried scallion pancake, and a few others. In addition to this (maybe more importantly, too), I personally have been making green onion pancakes since I was literally ten years old. It is actually one of the very first things that I learned how to cook.
And to be absolutely honest, I really thought I knew how to make these things. Frankly at face value, they don't appear to be that hard. It's a flour and water based dough, rolled with green onions, flattened, and then fried. That's literally it. BUT. then I went to taiwan. and THEN I ate some of the most beautiful, flakey, and impossibly delicate green onion pancakes that I've ever had, and realized. I have no idea how to create this. So. Here we are, on a quest to create not just ANY green onion pancake, but. THE BEST green onion pancake that has ever rocked my world. And let me tell y'all, it's way more difficult than I thought. Hope you try it.
Serves 2-3
INGREDIENTS
2 cups AP flour
1 cup boiling water
1/2 tsp baking soda
18-20 green onions
kosher salt
sesame oil
peanut oil
PREP
SLICE the green onions thinly, set aside
COMBINE the AP flour, baking soda, and a pinch of kosher salt in a large mixing bowl
ADD the boiling water and kneed until a shaggy dough forms
DIVIDE the dough into 2.5 oz dough balls, then let rest for 30 minutes
ADD the dough ball to a liberally floured work surface, then work into a coin shape by hand
ROLL the dough with a quarter turn after each roll until 10 inches in diameter
BRUSH the dough lightly with sesame oil, then coil lengthwise first, then again into a coil
WORK the dough into a coin shape again, then roll the dough out a 2nd time until 10 inches in diameter
BRUSH with sesame oil, then add a liberal amount of green onions
COIL the dough lengthwise again, then again into a coil
WORK the dough into a coin shape a 3rd time, then gently roll out until about 6 inches in diameter
ON THE STOVE
HEAT a skillet over medium heat, then add 4 tbsp peanut oil and long yao
ADD the pancake to the skillet and fry for 2-3 minutes per side until golden brown