All About Korean Pancake & Pajeon Recipe (Scallion Pancake) (2024)

Hi! Welcome, I am so happy to have you here to tell you all about Jeon, the Korean pancake. More specifically, it is a savory pancake. When you search for Korean pancakes, you will get results for a sweet type of pancake called Hotteok(which I will post later on my blog), or Joen, a savory one that I’m going to talk about today. They are very different types of food, and we don’t call them “pancakes” in Korea. It’s just an easier term for people who know pancakes. I guess people started to call it the “Korean Pancake” because it has a runny batter that has a similar texture as pancakes.

Anyway, I am so happy to have you here and can’t wait to tell you more about this Korean pancake, jeon. This is also one of the most popular Korean foods that foreigners love, so you can cook it for your friends and guests too. I make it so often at home for its versatility and it is a great way to include more veggies in your diet. Then, let’s start!

What is Jeon, Korean Pancake?

This savory Korean pancake has two different names in Korean – Jeon (煎) or jjijim. It is a Korean dish with a cooking method that involves cooking ingredients such as fish, lean meat, tofu, or thinly sliced vegetables in a thin batter with oil in a frying pan. It is usually very thin and wide, more like a crêpe than a pancake. My mom used to say that the thinner the jeon is, the better it tastes.

It is commonly eaten on holidays such as Lunar New Year or Korean Thanksgiving, Chuseok because oil used to be scarce and very expensive back in the day. People could only splurge on oil on holidays like New Year’s and Thanksgiving. I have a blog post about Chuseok if you are interested!

Chuseok Holiday, Korean Thanksgiving

Rice Cake Recipe | Making Songpyeon for Chuseok

Types of Jeon, Korean Pancake

There are so many varieties of jeon, the Korean pancakes. There are many ingredients you can put in crêpe, right? It’s just like that, there can be so many ingredients for jeon! But there are mainly three types of jeon depending on the main ingredients.

1. Thin Jeon with Flour

This is a type of jeon, Korean pancakes, made with flour or other batter as the main ingredients, and these usually involve vegetable ingredients or beans. This type is usually very thin and side. The ingredients for this type of jeon include chive, kimchi, and green onion, which is the recipe I will share below! Mung bean and buckwheat pancakes also belong to this type, although they can be about an inch thick.

2. Main Ingredient Coated with Batter Jeon

This is a jeon, a Korean pancake, type that is popular during holidays. There is usually one main ingredient that is simply coated with batter and cooked with oil in a pan. The main ingredients include pumpkin, zucchini, fish, meatballs, tofu, and mushrooms. For instance, a whole shiitake mushroom can be dipped into a batter and fried. It is so flavorful I love it! For ingredients like pumpkin, zucchini, and tofu, they are usually cut into bite-size, coated with batter, and then fried.

3. Mixed Ingredients Jeon

There are jeon that is made by mixing the ingredients above, such as kimchi & meat Korean pancakes. They usually take the form of the #1, thin jeon with flour. So the mixture of ingredients can be cooked in a batter into a thin and wide pancake.

Jeon, Korean Pancake, in Holidays

Jeon, the Korean pancake, is one of the main holiday dishes. It involves a long and messy process of frying thin batters, therefore, it is rather a special dish that you want to eat during the holidays like Lunar New Year and Korean Thanksgiving Chuseok. Also, traditionally, it was a fatty food with lots of oil in the recipe and you’d feel full after eating a few pieces. I don’t use oil or very little of it when I make the Korean pancake for that reason. After the holiday, there can be many leftover jeon and people make stew out of it as the leftover jeon wouldn’t taste so nice. It is best when it is fried fresh out of the pan. In my household, we never had a problem of having leftover jeon so I never really grew up eating jeon stew called jeon-jjigae.

Jeon, Korean Pancake, on Rainy Days

For whatever reason, people in Korea like to have Jeon on rainy days. It has sort of become a custom to have the savory Korean pancake with some Makgeolli, a sweet sparkling rice wine. There are several theories as to why this Jeon became popular on rainy days. Firstly, the sounds of pancakes sizzling in oil sound similar to raindrops. Secondly, the smell spreads better on rainy or humid days. People might want to smell the strong savory umami smell of oil in pancakes on rainy days. The last theory is that when the temperature and the sunlight duration drop, people want to feel better by having some alcohol(Makgeolli) and fatty food(Jeon).

When it starts to rain in the evening, my mom would whip up some pancake batter and we could have green onion pancakes. Ah, I miss those days. Now I’m getting hungry. Should we start with the recipe for the scallion pancake, the pajeon, now?

Cooking Tips for Pajeon, Scallion Pancake

1. Mix Rice Flour for Crunch

People use starch or flour for fries (which is basically a mixture of a variety of starch flour) to make the pancake more crispy. But starch is not a very healthy option. In that case, you can mix rice flour with a ratio of 1 part rice flour to 2 parts regular white flour to achieve a crispy outer layer. I went into detail about the topic of how to use rice flour on my blog.

2. Make it Thin

With a little bit of oil spread around the pan, put the batter evenly on the pan and try to spread it as thinly and widely as possible. That’s the classic way to do it! Then it will be crunchy on the outside but it will still have a soft and moist texture to it because of the cooked scallion.

How to Store & Reheat Jeon, Korean Pancake

Eating leftover jeon is like eating leftover pizza. It’s still delicious, but it can be cold and has a rubbery texture due to the gluten in wheat. But there is a way to store jeon so you can eat the pancake that still tastes nice.

1. Once the jeon is cooled, put it in a plastic zip bag. You put the whole jeon or cut it into bite-size and store. Make sure to put one portion in one bag.
2. Tightly seal the bag and freeze it in the freezer.
3. It is best to thaw it in the refrigerator the day before eating. If you are in a hurry, take it out and defrost it in the microwave first.
4. Heat a pan and pour a little bit of oil. You don’t need a lot of oil because the cooked jeon already has oil in it. Then reheat it in a pan. Or you can put it in the air fryer or the oven without oil at 180°C or 356°F for 10 minutes.

Pajeon, an Iconic Korean Pancake

I hope you enjoyed today’s blog post about Korean pancakes and the pajeon. I plan to make some pajeon and tteokguk this Lunar New Year. If you haven’t read my absolutely delicious creamy, savory, and vegan tteokguk recipe, read it here!

Korean Rice Cake Soup, Tteokguk | + Vegan Tteokguk Recipe