Also known as kimchi-jeon or kimchi-buchimgae. Quick, easy and delicious don’t often play together, but that’s the deal you get with this tangy, savoury pancake.

Time: 2/5
Perfect weeknight fling

Effort: 2/5
Mix, fry and eat. Although I wouldn’t try to meal prep this.

It takes two to tango

Every now and then, we come across a situation where we want something quick and simple for dinner and don’t want to wait for rice to cook. Maybe it’s been a long day and we just want something quick to fill our stomachs. Maybe we want something other than rice for a change. Or maybe, we went to the grocery store just before they closed and got a bunch of food for a criminally low price, and needed a carbohydrate to go with the meat and vegetables.

Last Thursday was the last of those, and through the magic of having a well stocked pantry, digging through the freezer and growing our own scallions, we were able to throw together this Korean-inspired savoury kimchi pancake (also known as kimchi-jeon or kimchi-buchimgae) in a pinch.

I say we, because while my SO worked on the pancake, I was roasting chicken thighs in the oven and cooking the lettuce. It’s a team effort, and cooking with someone you love can be a magical experience when the two of you sync up, everything clicks. Putting dinner together one step at a time, like an elaborate dance.

I don’t have much to say about my attempt at the honey glazed chicken thighs, except that I didn’t pre-marinate them like I usually do, and I’m never skipping that step again because it’s so much better that way. I also don’t have much to say about the lettuce, because lettuce is lettuce.

But the kimchi pancake, oh man. Salty, savoury, tangy and juicy, words fail to do justice to the flavour explosion that is kimchi. It’s even better along the edges where the pancake gets a bit charred and crispy, and the excellent dipping sauce certainly doesn’t hurt.

My only two regrets are not making multiple thinner pancakes for proportionally more crispy edges, and not using homemade kimchi because I haven’t gotten around to showing how to do that yet.

But life is too short for regrets. Life is for fun and good food with people you love. Onwards to kimchi pancakes!

Dramatis Personae

Served two.

Low gluten flour – 100g

I’ve seen recipes use a wide range of flours. Cake flour, or a mix of wheat and rice flour, or even just all purpose flour. It’s what Korean cooking legend Maangchi uses, and I’m not one to argue with her.

But I haven’t seen recipes calling specifically for bread flour, so I guess the principle is to avoid a lot of gluten. In any case, low gluten flour was what we had, it’s what we used and it turned out good.

Kimchi – 100g

Fermented Napa cabbage, store bought or homemade, chopped fine in either case. I just dumped my whole pack of supermarket kimchi into it.

Other fillings – to taste

Time to clean out the freezer and raid the pantry. I threw in a stick of imitation crab meat, and some scallions from the windowsill because I grow my own. Keep the portions conservative, and slice everything into small pieces.

Egg – 1 large

The main wet ingredient, although you might need more water to achieve the thick pancake batter sort of texture you want. The amount of batter one egg will make is the lower bound of how much kimchi-neon you can cook, unless you can find a use for half a beaten egg. Maybe the world’s tiniest portion of scrambled eggs.

Miscellaneous 

A touch of gochujang gives colour as well as flavour, and a half teaspoon of sugar also helps balance out all the savoury with some sweet.

You can add some salt, or you can go without. The kimchi and the gochujang already does a fine job seasoning the pancake, but some evenly distributed seasoning does improve the gastronomic experience.

Another technically optional but very exciting ingredient is a piece of processed cheese, torn into itty bitty pieces and stirred into the batter where it can melt and turn into little cheesy pockets inside the pancake. Highly recommended.

Dipping sauce

Mix vinegar, light soy sauce and sesame oil together and play with the proportions until it tastes good to you. Garnish with sesame seeds.

This was surprisingly good for how simple it was! I see it working well for potstickers as well.

Executive summary

1. Gather ingredients. Chop up the fillings.
2. Mix flour, water and salt together until a thick pancake batter is formed.
3. Add kimchi and fillings, then stir to combine.
4. Get a generous amount of oil into a nonstick pan on medium heat.
5. Pour in the batter and fry for several minutes on both sides, until golden.
6. Mix sauce ingredients together and adjust for seasoning.
7. Assemble and serve.

Play by Play

Last things first. The sooner I season the chicken, the more time the seasoning has to work itself into the meat. Shaoxing wine, soy sauce, white pepper, sugar and corn starch. The honey is for glazing later.

Preheat oven, mix things up, bake. Now I have my hands free to go deal with the other stuff.

Always eat your veggies! Always wash them, too. It always looks like there’s too much when you start cooking vegetables, and lettuce is one of the worst offenders.

And here’s where the action really is. My SO weighed out everything and folded the solids into the liquids.

Cut up the fillings, mix them in, and loosen the texture with water if needed. You want it gloopy, not thin or clumpy.

Plenty of oil in a nonstick skillet, fry on medium heat. You can actually see the doneness creep up through the raw batter. The edges have crisped up, so it’s time for the moment of truth. Will it survive the flip?

Well, I tried. Next time round I would do multiple smaller pancakes. Smaller pancakes, more crispy edge.

My SO mad the sauce while I was over the stove. No fancy tricks here, just mix and match until it tastes good.

Time to glaze the chicken before torching it. I thinned the honey out with a bit of water based on some bad intel, and regretted it. Do as I say, not as I do.

Post-pyrotechnics and garnish. This time I remembered to scatter my sesame seeds after going over the chicken with the blowtorch, unlike my earlier teriyaki chicken (which was delicious otherwise).

Dinner is served! Soju technically optional, but in my household alcohol manifests itself spontaneously whenever the food is good for some reason.

I really recommend you give the dipping sauce a try.

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