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Home > Marie Myung-Ok Lee's Favorite Comfort Food: Too-Many-Garlic-Chives Buchu Jeon (부추전)

Marie Myung-Ok Lee's Favorite Comfort Food: Too-Many-Garlic-Chives Buchu Jeon (부추전)

Marie Myung-Ok Lee - June 15, 2020

Korean pancakes come in both savory and sweet types. “Jeon” is the generic term for savory pancakes that can include kimchi, seafood, green onions — and here, garlic chives.

Garlic chives can be a pain to clean if you get them from a farmer, as I do. But once cleaned of dirt, they are amazingly resilient. Back when I used to travel a lot (Travel? What’s that?), I had cleaned a bunch but hadn’t had time to use them. I threw them into the freezer, and now with the COVID-19 shelter-in-place order, I defrosted them, then promptly forgot about them for a week. I threw them in some jeon dipped in (gluten-free) soy sauce, and it was a great lunch.

This recipe is (1) the way I cook, basically flinging things together and (2) dependent on the amount of garlic chives you have. You can use a jeon mix, but I’m gluten-free and came up with my own.


What you need

  • Sweet rice flour (also called glutinous rice)
  • Water
  • Tapioca flour (esp if you like a chewier texture)
  • Salt
  • Baking soda
  • 1 egg
  • Garlic chives left long, maybe cut in half once

Clean the chives and put in a large bowl along with flours (3/4 rice flour, 1/4 tapioca flour ratio), a dash of salt to taste, 1/2-1 teaspoon baking soda. Stir in egg. The trick is to have LESS batter, like a tempura. It should be mostly chives dusted with flour. If it’s too thick (if it's not like pancake batter), add egg. It should be a hair thicker than pancake batter, more like a paste so that it can keep the veggies together. 

Oil a skillet with a neutral oil (I use avocado) on medium high, and cook until slightly golden brown. Flip, repeat. Mine aren't round because my pan is small, so I make them whatever shape to fit. But they still taste great!

Sauce: plain soy sauce, coconut aminos, a mix of sesame oil, soy sauce, rice vinegar, toasted sesame seeds on top. Or make a dipping sauce for the lazy with half soy sauce and half X’ian Famous Food’s chili oil [1]. Enjoy! 

Categories: 
Food & Agriculture [2]

Source URL:https://hyphenmagazine.com/blog/2020/06/marie-myung-ok-lees-favorite-comfort-food-too-many-garlic-chives-buchu-jeon-%EB%B6%80%EC%B6%94%EC%A0%84

Links
[1] https://www.xianfoods.com/shop/box-of-10-xff-chili-oil-packs [2] https://hyphenmagazine.com/categories/food-agriculture