A taste of Korea: Unveiling the sweet allure of hotteok
This is a delicacy that Koreans enjoy both at home and on the town. Yeast pancakes with filling are a hallmark of this country's street food cuisine.
Hotteok is a Korean pancake with filling. It's most commonly made from yeast dough with the addition of glutinous rice flour. This addition ensures that the fried pancakes are crispy on the outside and chewy and soft on the inside. Historically, they were made with a meat filling, but Koreans later opted for a sweet filling of brown sugar, cinnamon, and chopped nuts.
Korean hotteok
While apple fritters are delicious, sometimes it's worth trying something new and tasty. You might think that since this is a Korean recipe, the ingredients will be complicated and hard to find. In reality, you don't have to search far and wide, as everything can be found in a supermarket. You can even skip the glutinous rice flour mentioned earlier.
Yeast dough tastes best with a sweet, nutty filling. Pair it with a glass of milk or your favourite coffee, and you can feel as if you've visited a Korean grandmother or strolled through an Asian market.
Ingredients:
- 310 grams of all-purpose flour
- 140 millilitres of milk
- 70 millilitres of water
- 20 grams of fresh yeast
- 1 teaspoon of sugar
- A pinch of salt
- Oil for frying
Filling:
- 255 grams of walnuts
- 3 tablespoons of brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon of cinnamon
Instructions:
- Crumble the yeast into a bowl, add sugar, and mix thoroughly.
- Add warm milk and water, and mix.
- Add flour, a pinch of salt, and knead the dough thoroughly.
- Cover with a cloth and let it rise for an hour.
- Chop the walnuts and mix them with sugar and cinnamon.
- Knead the risen dough briefly to remove the air.
- Divide the dough into about 8 pieces and shape each into a ball.
- Flatten each ball with a rolling pin or by hand.
- Add a generous amount of filling and seal like a dumpling.
- Flatten again to form a round pancake.
- Heat the oil in a pan and place the prepared pancakes in it.
- Fry on medium heat for 1-2 minutes on each side until they are golden brown. During frying, flatten them with a spatula.
Serve the hotteok straight from the pan while hot. Enjoy!
