What is your favorite method to make vegetables into breakfast, brunch, dinner or even snacks? Do you have a workable recipe to easily introduce vegetable to kids? My solution to both questions is "vegetable pancakes"!
Vegetable pancakes is one of the easiest and yet delicious ways to consume vegetables. It takes a few common ingredients and less than 30 minutes to prepare. They are perfect for any meal, as well as a healthy snack. Don't forget that you could keep some in the freezer and heat them up when you need a quick bite without compromising much on the nutrition aspect.
HOW I MET THE VEGETABLE PANCAKES
The Chinese version of pancake is usually a savory crepe made of flour, egg and water. It is called 煎饼 (Jiān Bǐng), pan-fried crepe.
In my childhood in order to let me eat more vegetables, my grandma started to put a slight portion of grated zucchini into the batter of Jian Bing. Gradually more and more zucchini were added, up to the point where my pancakes were turning green. I was too young to appreciate the wholesome benefit, but surely it was a smart and tricky way of my grandma to let me eat vegetables!
MY VERSIONS OF VEGETABLE PANCAKES
Many vegetables can be great ingredients in making vegetable pancakes. Zucchini being the most common one, other great options are carrots, tomato, cabbage, onion, potato, etc.
In this post I am sharing two recipes: 1) zucchini pancakes, a classic version; 2) tomato pancake, a pancake with resemblance to the Italian pizza.
ZUCCHINI PANCAKES & TOMATO PANCAKES 西葫芦饼 西红柿煎饼
Course: FIRST COURSE, SNACKCuisine: CHINESEDifficulty: LOW3
persons20
minutes10
minutesVegetable pancakes is one of the easiest and yet delicious ways to consume vegetables. It takes a few common ingredients and less than 30 minutes to prepare. They are perfect for any meal, as well as a healthy snack.
INGREDIENTS
- 🥒 Zucchini Pancakes
Zucchine: 3
Eggs: 3
Salt: 3 tsp
White pepper ground: 1/2 tsp
Olio di sesamo (opzionale): 1/2 cucchiaio
Corn starch: 3 tbsp
All purpose flour: 90g
- 🍅 Tomato Pancakes
Tomato: 350g
Eggs: 2
Salt: 1 tsp
White pepper ground: 1/2 tsp
Olio di sesamo (opzionale): 1/2 cucchiaio
Scallion (chopped): 1/3
All purpose flour: 100g
Preparation
- 🥒 Zucchini Pancakes
- Shred the zucchini. Add 3 tsp of salt and mix well. Leave it for 15 minutes to let the zucchini juice come out.
- Break 3 eggs in a bowl. Add white pepper ground and sesame oil. Mix them well.
- Squeeze the zucchini. Add in the corn starch (nota) and mix well.
- Mix the egg then the flour with the zucchini. Mix everything evenly to have the batter.
- Heat up a skillet and brush a layer of oil at the bottom. When the skillet is hot, place 2 tbsp of batter to create a pancake of 7-8 cm diameter. You could make 3-4 pancakes at the same time depending on the dimension of your skillet.
- Pan-fry the pancake for 1-1.5 minute. Then turn it over to continue cooking the other side for 1.5 minutes.
- 🍅 Tomato Pancakes
- Finely chop the tomatoes and gather them into a bowl. Add in 1 tsp of salt and mix it well.
- Break 2 eggs into another bowl. Mix it with white pepper ground and the sesame oil.
- Mix the egg with the tomatoes. Then add in chopped scallion and the flour. Mix everything evenly to have the batter.
- Heat up a skillet with some oil at the bottom. When the skillet is hot, pour the batter into the skillet. Differently from the zucchini pancakes, here we are looking for thin pancake with bigger size.
- Cook the pancake with the lid on with lower heat.
- When the bottom of the pancake becomes firm, turn it over and continue pan-frying the other side until it is cooked.
- Cut it into slices and serve when it is hot.
Video Recipe
NOTE
- Corn starch can absorb the extra liquid from the zucchini, preventing the inner of the pancake remaining too wet during the cooking.
When you prepare this dish, don't forget to SHARE IT on your social media using hashtag #cinaintavola and TAG ME @cinaintavola. FOLLOW ME on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Youtube to stay in touch!
