Today I made a savory pancake with canned tuna and kimchi. In Korean, you could sort of compare it to donggrangttaeng (Korean meat patties), but I’m going to keep it simple and just call it tuna kimchi jeon.
The flavor kick in this one comes from cheddar cheese. Cheese and kimchi are honestly such a good match together.
Since kimchi’s in the mix, this one runs a little spicy, so kids might have a hard time with it. Don’t worry though, I’ll show you a kid-friendly version too.
On this blog, I usually cook with ingredients you’d find in Korean grocery stores, but since so many readers overseas check this out, I try to focus on ingredients you can find abroad, or at least point you toward good substitutes. So go ahead and give this one a try.
Banchan (Korean side dishes) aren’t just for eating with rice, which is the staple in Korean meals. People eat them with ramen, with fried chicken, and honestly in all kinds of combinations. Personally, I love eating kimchi alongside pizza.
Let me walk you through how to make tuna kimchi pancakes.
This side dish is simple to make too, so you can have it ready in under 30 minutes. And here’s the bonus: you don’t need any separate seasoning sauce, salt, soy sauce, or sugar. The kimchi itself brings all the seasoning you need.
Ingredients
▪ Canned tuna – 200g
▪ Kimchi – 200g
▪ 1/6 zucchini (optional, feel free to skip)
▪ 1/4 onion
▪ Mozzarella cheese – 2 tablespoons (using a regular soup spoon, not a measuring spoon)
▪ All-purpose flour, Korean pancake batter mix (bujingae-garu), or frying batter mix (twigim-garu) – 2 tablespoons
▪ 1 egg
▪ Olive oil – 4 tablespoons
Tools
▪ Scissors
▪ Strainer
▪ Cutting board
▪ Knife
▪ Frying pan
▪ Large bowl
▪ Plate
▪ Paper towels
Canned tuna comes with a lot of oil in it, so to keep things light, drain that oil off using a strainer. Pressing down with a spoon helps squeeze out the oil more thoroughly.
Just so you know, I don’t drain the oil out every single time I cook with canned tuna. For tuna kimchi stew, for example, that oil actually needs to stay in, since it adds richness and flavor.
But for this dish, since we’re frying separately with olive oil, removing the tuna’s own oil keeps things from tasting greasy, and it ends up more delicious this way.
Instead of laying the kimchi on a cutting board and slicing it with a knife, it’s easier to just hold it in your hand and snip it with scissors. Cut it as small as you can, roughly the size you see in the photo above.
If your kimchi is really spicy, you can rinse it under running water to wash off the chili flakes and seasoning, then squeeze out the excess water before using it.
And since kids often can’t handle spicy kimchi, if you’re making a kid-friendly version, just leave the kimchi out and follow every other step exactly the same.
Cut the 1/4 onion and 1/6 zucchini into pieces about 0.5mm thick as well. If you don’t have zucchini on hand, feel free to skip it. Onion, though, needs to stay in, since it brings that natural sweetness to the dish.
Add the zucchini and onion to the chopped kimchi, along with 2 tablespoons of mozzarella cheese (again, using a regular soup spoon), which is really the star ingredient here. Cheddar cheese works just as well, if you go that route, just cut 1 to 2 slices and add them in.
Add in the drained tuna, along with 1 egg. Then, to help everything hold together nicely, mix in 2 tablespoons of all-purpose flour, Korean pancake batter mix, or frying batter mix, whichever you have on hand.
To recap: in a large bowl, combine the kimchi, onion, zucchini, cheese, tuna, egg, and flour, then stir well with a spoon until everything’s evenly mixed.
Use a frying pan that’s at least 20cm wide, a bit on the larger side. Add 4 tablespoons of cooking oil or olive oil to the pan, and keep the heat on low. Cooking slowly over low heat lets everything cook through properly.
Scoop about 2 soup spoons’ worth of the mixture from the bowl onto the pan and shape it into a round patty. If you make the patties too big, they’ll be hard to flip and won’t cook evenly. For an easier time, try using just 1 spoonful per patty to keep them smaller, since bigger patties are trickier to cook through. I went with 2 spoonfuls for mine.
If the heat’s too high, the outside can burn, so keep it on low and flip with a spatula as it cooks. The tuna’s already cooked, so you’re really just waiting for the kimchi, onion, zucchini, and flour to cook through, which takes about 10 minutes of flipping back and forth.
For the kid-friendly version, remember, just leave out the kimchi, but add a pinch of salt in its place. Then follow the exact same process, shaping it into rounds and flipping it in the pan.
Once it’s golden brown after about 10 minutes, it’s done. Since we cooked it over low heat, the pancakes will have soaked up quite a bit of oil, so line a plate with paper towels and place the tuna kimchi pancakes on top to drain off the excess.
You can eat these tuna kimchi pancakes just as they are, or dip them in mayonnaise, which is also really good.
Hope you have a wonderful meal today. Thank you! 🙂
