Okonomiyaki: Making Cabbage Pancakes like a BOSS
This is more or less a ghetto broke college student's method of making okonomiyaki (Japanese cabbage pancakes). I apologize for the lack of posts. I've been a bum about getting up recipes, since most of the time I order off Seamless. I can't help it, it's right there...and if it's on a credit card it's not real money...right? No one really expects me to pay back these absurd student loans right? Right?!
I took this recipe from Runny, who taught me how to "cheat" okonomiyaki.
Pic of everything in the bowl.
Me grilling it.
Done.
I eye everything so it's quite hard to describe just how much of each ingredient you need. In reality the only ingredient you need is cabbage and Bisquick.
Typically this is a good recipe to make when you are running low on groceries. That quarter of an onion you have left over from the recipe a few nights ago, yes that one. Take it and chop it up. See that bag of potato chips? We'll need that too. Oh and BBQ sauce, because who has time to go to the city and get Okonomiyaki sauce. Oh and bacon.
Ingredients:
4 strips of Bacon
1/2 Large white Onion
1/4 Cabbage
2 handful of BBQ potato chips
1 cup Original Bisquick
1/2 Cup Milk
Salt to taste
Pepper to taste
1 Tbs BBQ Sauce (or Okonomiyaki if you fancy like that)
Again the ingredient amounts can vary in amount.
Directions:
Heat a pan, and fry the bacon until crisp
Once, bacon is cooked to your liking, place aside and pour out the fat from the pan. The pan should still be lightly coated with the bacon fat.
Chop up the onion and place in bacon fat, and cook until brown, or til your liking
Put the Bisquick mix and milk into a bowl with a few pinches of salt and pepper, and mix to form the batter. Bisquick batter usually asks for an egg also, but I find that makes the okonomiyaki a bit too fluffy for my liking. Though egg is optional.
Chop up cabbage and place into the bowl of batter
chop up bacon and place into batter, along with onions
crush the handful of potato chips and place into batter (I don't like to crush mine too small, because I find that it just kinda melts once you cook it, and you don't get the distinct potato chip texture/flavor)
mix the batter and pour into pan.
The pan should still be slightly glazed with bacon fat, pour the batter into the pan. Remember to leave yourself enough room in the pan to flip. It's fine if you can't toss it up all fancy. I usually wait until the underside is really well done so it allows me to flip easily. This goes without saying, but the larger the pancake, the harder it is to flip. If it is too large, you can cut it up with your spatula for easier flips.
once both sides are cooked, set on plate and brush on BBQ sauce with a knife, or a spoon...or a finger because we're college students.
Traditional Okonomiyaki asks for the bacon to be on one side, but I always thought that it was quite cumbersome to enjoy the bacon that way, since it always slid off the pancake as I bit into it. Try it, let me know what you think. I think you'll enjoy it.
That's what she said.