Green Onion Cake

4 minute read

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You know those chinese pancakes? The ones that have green onions and are flaky? I think these are a great way to use up excess green onions.

Green onions are only sold in big bunches. If you buy a small bunch or pre-chopped, it ends up costing the same! And they don’t last very long once chopped up or freeze well either because they lose their texture entirely. Frozen green onions can only be used in dishes where they’re cooked down, not as a garnish (I typically buy green onions as a garnish!). Something like in the soup base or if making scallion oil, such is typically used in Vietnamese cuisine.

Well, I bought some green onions to make some queso. I chopped the remainder and put them in the freezer. Then I put the stems into a mason jar with some water. Did you know that green onion stems will regrow with only water? At least they will for one or two cycles. Once they regrew, I decided to try this recipe and have some learnings for next time.

Recipe

I started off using the Food Lab recipe from Kenji Lopez. The ingredients ratios are fine and it’s not a bad recipe. But it does have gotchas in the text edit and room for technique improvement. I’m going to use this recipe from Omnivore’s Cookbook next time, particularly the technique used.

Gotchas and Improvements

Too Much Water

The first thing that went wrong was not reading the recipe closely. It lists “1 cup of water” but when you actually read the recipe, it should say “3/4 cup of water, add more as needed”. Missing this point resulted in a very wet dough that was not workable and too sticky. I ended up adding a lot of flour back in, after spending over 15 minutes trying to knead this dough.

Roux Paste

The Omnivore’s Cookbook and Chef John suggest creating a roux paste for the oil. Creating a paste will reduce seeping when cooking, which keeps the oil in the pastry and maintains the layers. I had gummy, indistinct layers, as the multiple rolling squeezed it out.

Rolling Out a Circle

Rolling out a circle and then rolling it back into a log will create a section that is very wide. Squishing this area back down requires more aggressive rolling, which can cause the layers to merge.

Instead, I want to try rolling it out to a long rectangle. When rolled up along the long edge, there won’t be that many layers overlapping and it’ll be even and long rope that can be curled up.

I believe this is the same trap as making croissants, when trying for more flakiness by adding layers. But the individual layers are too uneven or thin to support distinct layers.

Rolling Once

This was kind of covered by the previous point. You only need to roll it up and flatten once. Attempting to roll it up multiple times may cause layers to merge.

When making croissants, some suggest going for 81 layers but without skill, you might actually have better results with 27 layers (one less fold).

I’m going to attempt to KISS and see if this makes a decent pancake first.

Temperature

A high cooking temperature will cause the outside to burn before the inside is cooked. This can result in a gummy texture. I noticed a gummy texture but am unsure if that’s because of poor layering or uncooked. This is a hot water dough, which results in a texture like wonton dumpling wrappers, which some may say is gummy if too thick.

A low temperature is not desirable either, as the oil will be absorbed too readily and the pancake will be heavy.

Not Using Enough Oil

These pancakes are thirsty mofos. Much like eggplants, it seems like they just slurp up what you give them. Ensure there is a decently thin layer of oil in the pan, so that the pancake will evenly brown. The best part of this pancake is the browned and crisped skin, you need enough oil that it can touch the entire surface.

Green Onion Cakes:

This recipe is adapted from Omnivore’s Cookbook.

Recipe

Ingredient Baker’s Percentage Portion for 1 cake (g)
Flour 100% (by definition, for completeness) 60
Water 60% 36
Sugar 3% 9
Salt 1.7% 3
Flour 13% 8
Oil 18% 11
Green onion 67% 40 (2 stalks)

Note:

  • Green onion is about 100 g per cup. A stem is about 20 g, so 5 stems per cup.
  • The roux can be made with aromatic oils as well

Technique

  1. Boil water.
  2. Mix boiling water into flour, mix with chopsticks. Dough may look a little dry and shaggy.
  3. Use hands to bring dough together as a ball. Dough should be slightly sticky and lift the bowl up. If dough is too dry, add more water.
  4. Turn out and knead dough, roughly 10 minutes. The dough will become smoother but not very smooth.
  5. Rest dough for 30-60 minutes.
  6. Make roux paste by heating oil, flour, and salt. If desired, you can add some aromatics such as Sichuan peppercorns. Set aside.
  7. Portion dough if necessary, depending on batch size. ~50-60 g per pancake. Roll pancakes into a long rectangle, about 1:3 ratio.
  8. Brush paste on evenly.
  9. Sprinkle on green onions.
  10. Roll up along long edge. Coil this long strand into a circle.
  11. Lightly flatten. Dust and leave to rest for 15 minutes.
  12. Roll the coils flat.
  13. The pancake can be frozen at this point.
  14. To cook, heat a pan with layer of oil on bottom. Cook one side, flip and cook other.