Crab Meat Jeon

Jeon is a pan fried meat or vegetables with egg batter similar to an omelet. It was commonly eaten in Chosun Dynasty for parties and events. Some of the most popular choice of the inside is pollack, ground beef, zucchini, sweet potato, Korean green pepper, and Leeks. Jeon is the origin of Korean pancakes because if you look at the language, "jeon" is suffix of Pajeon which means green onion Korean pancake. However, usually when people refer to jeon, it means small and flattened omelet typically with a single main ingredient.

This crab meat jeon is my mom's signature dish. It is so delicious and easy to make, I couldn't pass up this opportunity to share with the rest of the world. One day, my mom made tons of this crab meat jeon and invited like 50 people to the house. Below pictures show how much she prepared and I witnessed with my own eyes that they literally dissappeared within 30 minutes so that nothing was available by the time my own friends came by for some grub. I took pictures as she prepared this dish, constantly asking her to stop what she was doing to the point where she got a little annoyed.

Ingredients: finely diced crab meat (1/2 lbs), 1 beat egg, 1 table spoon of corn starch, 1 tsp of clam base, finely diced onions, green onions, carrots, and paprika.

1. You need to mix all the ingredients above together in a bowl like below.




This is a close up shot of the mixture.

2. Oil your pan and take about two spoons of the mixture and flatten out on the pan in a circular shape. Pan fry them for 2 minutes on one side in high heat.
Flip over and heat up another minute on the other side. Flatten it some more with a spatula once you flip them.


Yeah, and you're finished. Enjoy!

Korean Vegetable Pancake (Leeks)

This vegetable pancake is called Boochoo Juhn or Boochu Jeon using leeks or Chinese Nira. This is a vegan dish and I love how fresh this tastes. This is based on a variety of vegetables including zucchini, red peppers, onions, but most importantly, with leeks. Although I believe the word leek is to generally describe this type of vegetable, the tag on the vegetable said “Chinese Nira.” In Korean, this is called Boochu but I never knew it had another term other than leeks.

1. Wash the leeks thoroughly and chop them in one inch sizes.

2. Thinly slice zucchini, onion, and red peppers and add on a dish together.

3. For preparing the batter, you need flour, buchim mix (makes the dough more chewy), and water.  If you this as a vegetarian dish instead of vegan, you can add an egg but it’s really not necessary.  This tastes so good as is.  Also remember to sift the flour as it makes the better texture of the dough overall. The proportion of water to the mix would be around 5:2 ratio, meaning it’s thick.


Add a spoonful of garlic to the mix.

Add the vegetables to the batter. Below is how thick the mixture should be. Notice there is barely no runny liquid.

4. Now is the time to cook and first you need to oil your pan.

5. Add the mixture onto the pan.

6. Once one side is cooked for 3-4 minutes, use a large spatula and flip it to the other side and press down to evenly flatten the pancake.

7. Flip again one more time back to the original side, which is the better looking side and just slide it onto your plate so this side will display on top of your plate.

Man, I'm watering in my mouth again thinking about this food. Enjoy!

Zucchini Oyster Pancake

Oyster is one of my favorite things to eat in my life.  I’ve eaten probably hundred dozens of oysters in my life raw, deep fried, baked and you name it.  One day when I was in college, my mom told me she was working on this new recipe she learned from this other Korean lady she was hanging out with.  It turned out to be this delicious oyster Korean pancake with zucchini. Now, I’ve had shrimp and squid on my Korean pancakes before but oyster was a new thing and was quite excited about it.  When I tried it, it was the best Korean pancake I’ve tried.  I mean why didn’t anyone think of putting oysters on that thing before?  So now here I am many years later, I am trying to make this myself in my school apartment.

Ingredients (for one pancake): 1/2 cup of flour, 1/2 water, 1 egg, sliced zucchini, carrot, green onions (or chives), jalapeño, onion (recommended option) and oysters

1. Mix flour with water and make sure there are no big chunks of flour left. When you mix, add more flour if you need to if the mix isn’t very thick. The mix must be thick enough so that it doesn’t break when you flip it but the 50/50 water to flour ratio is good.

2. Prepare vegetables by slicing them thinly and short. For jalapeno peppers, you want to mince them.







3. Add an egg before adding the vegetables. Once the egg is well mixed, add the vegetables to the mix.


4. Cut the oysters into small sizes and add to the mix.


So this is what the final mix looks like and this does not yet look so appetizing but be patient. :)

5. Oil your pan and pour the mix on the pan.

After cooking 2 minutes in high heat, turn to med heat for additional 2 minutes. When it's ready for flipping, it should look like below. Before flipping, make sure the pancake is not stuck to the pan. Use a thin spatula and separate it before flipping.

6. Have a great deal of fun flipping the sucker. It’s really not difficult. But I understand if you wanna take no chance.  You can use a wide spatula.

So after flipping, the bottom side now up should look nice and brown. Cook additional 2-3 minutes on the uncooked side. If you want more brown for crispier texture, cook a little longer.  You can check by slowly lifting the pancake on one side with a spatula to see how brown it is.

7. When it’s ready, put a dish on top of your pan and lift the pan so that the pancake will be on your dish with the good looking side up without any trouble. No more flipping.


All you gotta do now is grub. The first two pictures are when it's normally cooked with 2 minutes of cooking after flipping.

Or you can make it slightly more burned. Personally I like it little burned because it's crispier.

Seafood Kimchi Pancake

Korean seafood pancakes are amazing.  I used to just sit around the kitchen when my mom cooks them to make sure every time she cooks a new batch, it disappears quick.  The only food that is better than Korean seafood pancake is the one added with kimchi on top of everything else.  With kimchi pancakes, squid plays a big role.  Shrimp and squid are two seafood types I would use with seafood kimchi pancake.

Ingredients (1 pancake): 1/2 cup of water, 1/2 cup of flour, sliced squid, 1/4 sliced onion, thinly sliced Kimchi, Kimchi juice, 1 eggs, sliced chives (not too small, about 1 inch long)

1. Put 1/2 cup of flour, 1/2 cup of water, 2 eggs, small pieces of kimchi and kimchi juice (juice on the bottom of your kimchi jar) into a container and mix it well using an eggbeater. Then add sliced squid, kimchi, chives, and onion into the mixture. The mixture must be a lot thicker than water. If too thin, it will break as you try to flip it over later.

2. Oil your pan and pour the mixture on it. Try not to make it too thick. Cook one side on med-high heat for about 5 minutes.

2. Using a spatula, see if the bottom side is cooked enough. It will turn brownish and feel hard. Unless you have a large and flat spatula to use it to flip over, the best way to flip this is to just tossing it in the air to flip it. It’s easier than you think. Fear not.

Cook for additional 2-3 minutes on the other side and it’s done.

3. The original top side before flipping is the good looking side that you want on top of your plate. To transfer it onto a dish, you can simply put your plate upside down on top of the pancake while still on the frying pan and flip the entire pan over with your hand on the plate. Just make sure the bottom is not stuck on the frying pan before performing the transfer.  At any point, you can destroy this pancake so be careful.