How to Make the BEST Chinese Scallion Pancakes (Original, Bacon, Cheese, Pork Floss)

Hey guys, I've been talking about making this video for a long time now, and today we're finally gonna do it. I'm gonna show you guys how to make some super awesome, super crispy, super delicious, super big scallion pancakes that you find at these restaurants you go to. But of course, we're gonna take it up a notch. I'm gonna show you guys a couple variations that I came up with. Before we get started, I wanna tell you guys that this recipe will make you about five, um, yay big size scallion pancakes, like humongous scallion pancakes. And here's why. I want you to make all these big, awesome scallion pancakes and just give them out to your friends and family so they can have some too, because sharing is caring. And also, that's just how many this recipe makes. Because I'm showing you guys a bunch of different variations of scallion pancakes, so that's why I gotta make this much, and I'm not good enough in math to kind of figure out how much it would take to just make, like, one scallion pancake. But you know what? What I said is true. You should get out there, go meet your neighbor, give them a scallion pancake, call up a friend you haven't talked to in years, give them a scallion pancake. You know, when I was trying out this recipe a couple days ago, I made, like, five massive scallion pancakes. I was calling friends I haven't talked to in years. I was like, hey, haven't talked to you in a while, how you doing? Good, is, uh, everything okay? Yeah, just thought I'd call and, uh, offer you a scallion pancake. Scallion pancakes, it reconnects friends. Here is what you need to make your scallion pancakes. You need some all-purpose flour. I use the non-bleach one. You need scallions. For each pancake, I recommend using about two scallions. You need some vegetable oil, some salt, some measuring cups, and we're working with a lot of dough, so we'll need a rolling pin. And also, you will need a little towel. First thing I'm gonna do is chop up all my scallions into really small, teeny-bitty pieces. Okay, my scallions all chopped. Now we're gonna mess with the flour. You're gonna put about six cups of flour into a big enough basin. Remember, we're also gonna add some water and mixing at the same time, so you need to find a big enough basin. All right, now we're gonna mix our dough. I'm gonna show you the secret of making awesome scallion pancakes, and it starts right here. It's about what type of water to add to your flour to make the dough better. So before you guys start mixing the water with the flour, boil some water first, and then get a container. Fill this with about three cups of cold water and about one and a third cup of boiling hot water. This is gonna make a huge difference, trust me. Now, once you have this, you're gonna slowly, and I mean very slowly, pour into your flour while mixing at the same time. So here we go. You wanna make sure it's all mixed well. Pour the water where you see, like, free-flowing flour, where it's not dough yet, and just mix that really, really well. Also, this isn't exact science. If you feel like you need more water because you still have so much powdery flour left, then add some more water. Make sure you're keeping the water ratio about two-thirds cold water and one-third boiling hot water. The point is to turn all the flour into dough. Now, the flour is mixed with the water, as you can see here. What we're gonna do now is we're gonna get our hands a little dirty. Not literally dirty, because, you know, don't touch this with dirty hands, but we're gonna start playing with the dough now. So now what you wanna do is basically make this dough into, like, a massive clump and cover the surface of the entire dough with loose flour right here. So get your hands in there and make a big ball out of this thing. Spray some flour on top of this so it doesn't get too sticky. And I'm gonna cover this whole thing with flour. This is like Play-Doh. This is so soft right now. See, this is what I mean. You can't leave it like that. Ah, look at this. This is what Spider-Man's web is made out of. Anywhere you're touching that is sticky, just kinda coat that a little bit with flour. All right, so there's my big ball of dough. It's not exactly, like, shaped like a ball. Now what you're gonna do is put it back into the basin. Take your towel and wet the towel. Now it's nappy time for the dough. We're gonna put our wet towel blanket over our dough here, our dough baby, and just let it sit there for about 20 to 25 minutes. All right, time to wake up our dough from its little nap. I'm gonna show you guys. This is how my mom used to wake me up when I was a kid. Get up! But there's our nice dough in its little basin looking all snug and stuff. We're gonna take this thing out of the basin and start playing with it on our little board. I'm gonna cover this board with some excess flour. Oh, it's not coming out! All right, gotta get this thing out of here. Just get it onto the board. This is kind of fun. You know, this is like playing with Play-Doh when you're a kid. All right, so I scooped out about as much as I can. You guys ever gave a massage to a piece of dough before? Well, you're doing it today. So start spreading some flour over it so it's not so sticky, like so. And then what you're gonna do is you're gonna start massaging this dough. Get your finger in there, massage that thing. Make this the most relaxed dough on this planet. Because the more you massage this dough, the better it's gonna taste, I kid you not. The fluffier it's gonna be, the softer it's gonna be. Which kind of makes sense, right? You're massaging all the tension out of this dough so it's nice and loose and relaxed. And then, you know what? You're gonna eat it. That's right. This is kind of like what they do with that cow in Japan, you know? They massage it until they like, you know, eat it. This is my iron palm method right here. Push in with my palm. As you're massaging, keep covering it with excess flour. And do this about 5 to 10 minutes. And again, the more you do this, the better your pancake will taste. This is a good way to practice your massage techniques. Of course, I wouldn't recommend like, massaging someone like this. Or I don't know, maybe that feels good. Or like this. All right, after you made your dough the most relaxed, chilled, loose dough on the planet. We're gonna roll it out into a nice long cylinder shape. And this is gonna feel a little weird. This is kind of like rubbing the tummy of a little puppy or something. This thing is like... It's like I'm rolling the Pillsbury Doughboy right now. I'm rolling the tummy out of the Pillsbury Doughboy. That's kind of like what I'm doing right now. I keep expecting this dough to go like... So after we roll it out, and you want it to be like the length and thickness of a typical loaf of bread. Take your knife, or in my case, my cleaver. And you're gonna chop this into five sections. And of course, this is where you get to decide how big your scion pancake is. So for me, I'm gonna chop it into five different sections. And each of my pancakes probably gonna be like the size of my plate right here. But you can do smaller ones if you want. One, two, three, four, five. All right. And right away, separate them and dip them in some flour so their ends don't stick together. Get rid of everything on your board except for one of those pieces of dough. So I have my piece of dough here. And I'm gonna make it into a lump. Cover it with flour. And now you want to grab your rolling pin. In case you're wondering, I'm in a horse stance right now. Right here. Because I'm practicing martial arts as I cook. No, it's because my camera angle. This is the only way I can fit into the frame. This is probably the only time in my life where I'm actually trying to be shorter. All right. Keep rolling it out till it's as thin as possible. All right. Here we go. All right. We're gonna add our salt first. We're gonna add about a teaspoon of salt. So take a teaspoon of salt and spread it all over. And you want to get all the corners edges too. So after you spread the salt, use your hands and go ahead and spread it evenly among your pancake. Now what you're gonna do is you're gonna put on the oil. So I have here some sunflower oil. You can use vegetable oil. I haven't tried this with olive oil. But I'm using vegetable oil because that is the Chinese way. Pour a little over a tablespoon right in the middle of your pancake. Then what you're gonna do is take the edges of the pancake and fold it over. So your edges are all covered with oil. You want your entire pancake to be covered with oil. So if that's not enough oil for you, put on some more oil. Then we're gonna spread a generous amount of scallions onto our pancake. So we want the scallions to go everywhere. Like I said, about two scallions for every pancake. Now you're gonna roll it up. Just keep rolling. Keep rolling. Kind of like a multi-layered burrito. All right. Then you get this. What you're gonna do now is take one end, tuck it in and start rolling it like a cinnamon roll. All right. Now you take a little water. You wet the end of this part right here where it's kind of loose. And then you kind of fold it. Stick it into the body. So you get this cinnamon roll type looking fun thing. All right. Now squish it down and roll it out again. This time you're not gonna roll it out as thin as you did last time because it's got scallions in there. But you'll want to roll it out as thin as you can again. Otherwise your scallion pancakes can be really thick. All right. So this is about as thin as I can go. And what I'm gonna do now is take my pan. And you want a lid with your pan. Get a big pan, big enough to fit your entire pancake in there. And just put just a little bit of oil in there. Because you already have a lot of oil inside your pancake. So like a dab. Like maybe like a couple teaspoons of oil. Turn the heat on to medium. A medium is enough. Heat up your oil and just toss your pancake in there. And make sure it covers the entire pan. And then put the cap on there. You're gonna let this cook for about two minutes. Once you see your pancake is starting to get a little fluffy and it's easily sliding around. Now it's time to turn this thing. Here's how you spin this bad boy. This is the scallion pancake somersault right here. Check it out guys. Oh, there we go. That wasn't perfect. That was like, that was like a six out of 10. But check out how good this looks. Look how beautiful that is on that one side. Oh, that is gorgeous. Beautiful. Oh, the edges. Oh man, my somersault kind of screwed up the edges a little. All right. And if you tap this side. See that? You hear that? It's crunchy and crispy. That means this side is basically done. So go ahead and cook the other side for about a minute, minute and a half. Both sides been cooking. Now what you want to do is you want to check and see how well this is cooked. And what you want to do is start doing the scallion pancake somersault. Flipping it back and forth just to gauge the crispiness on each side. Oh yeah. That was like an eight. All right, let's flip this back. Oh yeah. That was like a nine. Oh, look at that beautiful color. Oh, the smell. Oh, this is so beautiful. Oh my gosh. Can you guys see that? Look how beautiful this pancake is right now. That's all crispy. That's definitely done. Oh, that's hot. Check that out, everybody. Check out how awesome that pancake is. Oh, it smells so good. I'm going to cut this. We can have a taste. Check this out, guys. Look at that. Look how flaky that is. Huh? Yeah. I still got flour on my hands because I got to make some more. But look how flaky that is. Oh my God. Best scallion pancake I have ever had. I kid you not, guys. This pancake is redonkulously good. Redonkulously good. And you see all the layers there, how fluffy and nice that is? And this is why we give it a nice massage, because it rewards us with fluffiness. It's crispy on the outside. Perfect amount of salt. Soft and delicious. This is so good. Oh my God. Remember I said we're going to take this up a couple notches? Here we go. We're going to roll out our second scallion pancake. And guess what I'm going to add in there besides scallions and oil and salt? Bacon! Break it up into little pieces, and we're going to sprinkle that onto the pancake. So again, I spread the salt, the oil, the scallions, and I added all my bacon. All right. Ready for some bacon, scallion, and pancake somersault action? Yeah? Here we go. Ow. It kind of jumped out and burned me a little. Smells incredible. Yeah. Here we go. Bacon, scallion, pancake. Let's try it out. Here's the bacon, scallion, pancake. You see the bacon in there? Let me peel the layers for you. You see that? Doesn't that look good? Let's give this a shot. Oh my God. The bacon is still crispy. This is the perfect yeast-meats-west food right here. Perfect in this pancake. Amazing! That's amazing! Not even kidding, a little bit. So good. See all those layers? First of all, and all the bacon hidden underneath there? This is like a edible sleeping bag with bacon sleeping in it. I got bacon right there. Oh my God. So amazing. Verdict? Bacon and scallion pancake compatibility? 100%. Let's continue taking this up more notches. Can you guess what's going inside the pancake next? Rou son, meat floss. Yeah, this is happening. This is really happening. So we're going to spread the meat floss all over this scallion pancake. And honestly, I've never tried this before. So we're just kind of experimenting today. There is the meat floss pancake ready to go. All right, here we go. Pork floss scallion pancake. This is pretty darn good. See all that? The flavor is hitting me now. Oh, that's good. That, my friends, is awesome. The rou son flavor is warm, it's salty, it's sweet. Oh, this is amazing. This is amazing. What a great combination. All right, we're going to try one more. One last one. All right, check this out. My last pancake. And this pancake might be the most daring of them all. Scallion pancake with American cheddar cheese. Here we go. The cheddar cheese scallion pancake. All right, let's give this a try. See the cheese when I pulled it, it was already stringy and melting. Let's try this. You know what? I have to say, this is pretty darn good. Oh man, you know my only regret is? Look at how great that looks. It's like eating a tastier Hot Pocket. That's what it's kind of like eating. My only regret is that I didn't add like other types of cheese. If I put like, I don't know, four or five different types of cheese in here, this would be even better. It's really good. To be honest with you, I didn't know this combo was going to work. This combo works. You know what might make that even better? If you had some marinara sauce to dip it in. Because that was literally like the best cheesy bread slash Hot Pocket thing ever. Take a little sesame sauce. This is what Chinese sesame sauce looks like. This is also the stuff you use in hot pot. Take a little of that. Throw in just a little soy sauce, light soy sauce. And that's your main ingredient, the light soy sauce. Throw in a splash of sesame oil and just mix that up together. Oh, you know what's missing, right? Yeah, yeah, you guessed it. Hot oil. Toss some hot oil in that. And there you go. A simple little dipping sauce. Just dip it a little bit because it's going to be a little salty. That's good. If you also like, you can add just a little dash of black Chinese vinegar. Take your pancakes and start sharing them with your family, with your friends. These, I promise you, will be the best scallion pancakes you will ever eat. Forget ever ordering these in any restaurant ever again. Make these. You can also put them in the freezer. When you want to eat them, just throw them back into the pan for a little bit and fry them back up. The only thing that's kind of annoying is that the market value for scallion pancakes is like $2. So it's not like you're saving a ton of money when you go out and don't order a scallion pancake. But now you can have them fresh right in your own home. You know exactly what went into these. Guys, go try them. Don't forget to kick it up a notch and be creative. Add some of your own ingredients in there and let me know how it tastes. All right. Thanks so much for watching, everybody. See you later.