Homemade Scallion Pancakes

I'm not sure when it happened, but we recently became obsessed with scallion pancakes. What's not to like about crispy, flaky fried dough, mild onion flavor, and a savory dipping sauce? Every time we see them on a menu, whether served traditionally or in sandwich form, we have to order them. Nick and I finally decided to research how to make them at home, and one of Boston's favorites, Joanne Chang, has a recipe online that is not too difficult to follow - perfect!

Scallion Pancakes

It turns out that the simplest way to make these is to use pizza dough - who knew! I have since seen them made by Ming Tsai on TV with a homemade dough that didn't look too difficult, but using pizza dough was an easy and tasty alternative. The exact recipe can be found on the Food and Wine website.

After mixing up the chopped scallions and the sesame oil, we set to work on the dough.

Scallions

First Nick divided the dough in half and worked in sections.

Pizza Dough

After rolling it out so it was (roughly) in a 10" x 6" rectangle, we scooped about half of the scallion mixture onto the dough. If I was doing this again, I would probably add another bundle of the scallions to the mixture - I love them so much!

Next, we rolled-up the dough starting from one of the short ends so that the scallion mixture was nicely tucked up inside.

The log of dough was then coiled up, where we let it stand for about 15 minutes.

Coiled and resting....

After the dough had sat, we floured our work surface and rolled the coils out flat until they were about 8" in diameter. During this, some of the oil did leak out, but I imagine that is entirely normal.

Becoming a pancake

While I was rolling, we were allowing some canola oil to get super hot in the cast iron skillet.  If you flick some flour into the oil, it should sizzle, letting you know it is ready for the pancake. They only need about a minute and a half per side, or about 3 minutes total - just enough time to become a nice golden brown.

Sizzling!

Golden Brown

We allowed the cooked pancakes to drain a bit on a paper towel and sprinkled them with salt.

Ready for Dinner!

Once they cooled a bit, we cut the pancakes into eighths and served along with a soy dipping sauce - a combination of soy, rice vinegar and sesame oil.

Finished!

Scallion pancakes are an easy home project and would be great for a crowd or alongside a stir fry. If you want to get crazy, you can experiment with different starting doughs, but in a pinch the pizza dough is great. These totally satisfied the craving without incurring a delivery cost.