What it is
Spring onion pancake (蔥油餅, cōng yóu bǐng, literally "spring onion oil cake") is an unleavened wheat flatbread with oil and chopped spring onion worked through its layers. Pan-fried, it turns crisp at the edges and stays chewy inside. In Taiwan it is a breakfast and street snack, and many stalls add an egg. It differs from 蛋餅, the thinner, softer egg pancake of breakfast shops.
Where it came from
The technique points to northern China. The cartoonist and food writer Yu Fu (魚夫) notes that the key step, coiling a long strip of oiled dough and frying it flat, is the same as for 油旋 (yóuxuán), a well-known northern bread that he says came from Shandong. He has eaten a similar layered bread, 斤餅, at the Taipei restaurant 種福園.
A close relative is the flaky pancake (手抓餅, shǒu zhuā bǐng), pulled apart by hand and often wrapped round other food. A Taoyuan food company, 潘記, tells how a Taiwanese businessman tasted 油旋 in the Chinese countryside and adapted it as 蔥抓餅. Yu Fu calls the story far-fetched. In the same telling, the Taiwanese version caught the attention of a Shanghai food firm, which hired the singer Jay Chou to promote it.
How it is made
The dough is wheat flour, water and salt, with oil or lard. Some cooks mix it with boiling water, others with cold. The dough is rolled thin, brushed with oil, scattered with spring onion, then folded or rolled so that oil and onion sit between many layers. Many cooks coil the roll into a spiral and press it flat again. It is pan-fried until golden. Some stalls half pan-fry and half deep-fry it, which makes the crust puff and crunch.
How to eat it
It is eaten hot, at breakfast or as a snack. The usual extra is an egg (加蛋, jiā dàn). Condiments depend on the stall: soy paste, chilli oil or garlic paste. Some stalls serve it cut into pieces.
Around Taiwan
- Tainan
- A nameless stall in Wanli, South District, searchable online as 泡菜蔥油餅, half pan-fries and half deep-fries its pancakes and serves them with soy paste and chilli oil. They stay crisp even as they cool.
- North
- Sanxing (三星) in Yilan County is known for its spring onions. Yilan pancakes stuff them into a tube of dough that is coiled like a snail and shallow-fried. In Beitou, Taipei, a deep-fried "bomb" version (炸彈蔥油餅) puffs up like a small pillow around a soft-cooked egg.
- Central
- In Wufeng, Taichung, a stall by the market of Guangfu New Village (光復新村), an old government housing estate, rolls each pancake to order, half pan-fries and half deep-fries it, and serves it cut into pieces. It is known for its generous spring onion filling.
- South
- In Chiayi, Yu Fu describes a shop called 九代蔥油餅, whose pancakes are eaten early in the morning with a bowl of beef congee.
- East
- Hualien is known for 炸蛋蔥油餅, a pancake with a fried egg inside whose half-set yolk runs at the first bite. One old stall began as a handcart and leaves out the spring onion altogether. Huang's (黃記) in Taitung makes a moist, soft pancake filled with spring onion, meat and basil.
