Bindaetteok

Pancakes ground from soaked mung beans with no flour in the batter at all, fried thick in a great deal of oil.

Pork. Not vegetarian — contains fish sauce, pork.

Ingredients

• 300 g dried split mung beans
• 200 ml water, for grinding
• 200 g kimchi, as on its own page, squeezed and chopped
• 150 g pork belly or shoulder, minced
• 150 g beansprouts, roughly chopped
• 4 spring onions, sliced
• 3 cloves garlic, crushed
• 1 teaspoon salt
• black pepper
• oil, for frying

Method

1. THERE IS NO FLOUR IN THE BATTER AT ALL. It is soaked mung beans ground coarse with a little water, and the beans are both the structure and the flavour. That is the whole difference from the pajeon on this site, which is a thin wheat batter poured over spring onions: this one is thick, nubbly, savoury and substantial, and a spoonful of flour added to help it hold together turns it into a different and much blander pancake.
2. THE BEANS ARE GROUND COARSE, NOT SMOOTH. Pulse until most of them are broken but you can still see pieces -- the texture is the point. Blitzed to a cream it fries into something dense and pasty.
3. THE SKINS COME OFF. Split mung beans are mostly already hulled, but after soaking any loose green skins float and should be poured away with the water. Left in they are papery in the mouth.
4. IT IS FRIED IN FAR MORE OIL THAN FEELS RIGHT, deep enough to come a third of the way up the pancake. These are shallow-fried rather than dry-fried: the oil is what makes the edge lacy and crisp against the soft middle. A dry pan gives something closer to a bean burger.
5. AND THE KIMCHI AND BEANSPROUTS ARE SQUEEZED DRY, as everywhere else on this site. Water in the batter makes it spread thin and spit in the oil.
6. Mung beans rinsed and SOAKED in plenty of cold water 4 HOURS or overnight.
7. Drained, any floating skins poured off, and rinsed again.
8. Blitzed with the 200 ml water in short pulses to a COARSE batter with visible pieces of bean. It should drop thickly off a spoon.
9. Kimchi squeezed dry and chopped. Beansprouts chopped and squeezed.
10. Pork, kimchi, beansprouts, spring onions, garlic, salt and pepper folded into the batter.
11. A SMALL SPOONFUL FRIED AND TASTED for salt, since the pork is raw.
12. A heavy pan heated over a medium-high heat with oil 5 mm deep.
13. Two or three ladlefuls spread to rounds about 12 cm across and 1 cm thick, not touching.
14. Fried 4 to 5 minutes until the edges are deep brown and lacy, then turned once and given 3 to 4 minutes more. More oil added for each batch.
15. Drained on a rack and eaten hot, with a dip of soy sauce, vinegar and sliced onion.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under South Korea · All recipes