Flickr Find: Korean Pancakes (Pa Jeon)

This recipe is a little late for Pancake Day, but it's still a great weeknight dinner. It will clear out your pantry and your fridge, and leave you with a delicious meal!

Korean pancakes are made with just a few ingredients, and they're very adaptable to any leftover vegetables and meat or seafood too. They're a little like omelets: try any combinations that sound good to you. The basic batter has eggs, oil, rice flour, and regular flour.

The recipe can be found at the charming food blog, Pithy and Cleaver:

• Get the recipe: Pancakes for Dinner: Vegetarian Pa Jeon

(Image: Flickr member maggiephotos licensed for use under Creative Commons)

Comments (16)

Yum, those look delicious! Any ideas as to why they use seltzer water in the batter?

Thanks for the link! I was so excited to see it!

The seltzer is supposed to make the pancake texture lighter.

I haven't ever seen a veggie version of this, always seafood.

I just made some of these on Monday! Drizzled with a little soy sauce, rice vinegar, and sriracha.

We made these (using this recipe) on Friday night. They were so good we made them again on Saturday night.

the seltzer water allows air bubbles so its a bit fluffier!

works with belgian waffles too!

Whenever my mom made this, it would never reach the table because my brother and I would sneak it off the plate piping hot. It's so delicious dipped in soy sauce, apple vinegar, and korean chili powder (gochugaru).

The veggie version of this I've had had all the vegetables and kim chi. It's fantastic.

@gayatri, i agree about the vegetables and kimchi.. it's so good!

oh man, i love when my mom makes these with kimchi and squid. such a great comfort food.

As much as I love Korean food, I really need to learn to cook it. These look amazing!

What's the difference between pa jeon and bin det duk (sp?)?

Ohhh....I'm going to have to say this was definitely a recipe foul. The egg should NOT be the base of this recipe - rather, it shouldn't be in there at all. Egg will actually make your pancake very dense and muddle the vegetable flavors.

This recipe shouldn't be as complicated as the one on Pithy and Cleaver. My family's version - tempura batter mix, water, sesame oil, anything else you want to add (e.g. veggies/seafood/kimchi/chives), salt. Mix ingredients together. Fry in liberal amounts of sesame oil.

You'll find that this version bears an uncanny resemblance to those served in korean restaurants and in korea as street food.

kellyk: as i see it, pa jeon is a simple flour based pancake (mixed with veggies as you see above, or seafood or kimchi). bin dae duk has a base of mung beans, cooked similarly (i.e., fried in a pan) and with similar appearance (a savory "pancake"). but slightly different taste because of the mung beans.

Pa Jeon is made with reg flour

Bin Det Duk is made with beans (I can remember the name but it's small, yellow and some what flat)grind coarse in food processor.

I like chives on mine.