Leftover rice is kneaded with flour and chopped shiso until it holds together, then shaped into thick patties and pan-fried until golden. This Nagano griddle cake finishes with a quick turn in a sugar and soy glaze, just long enough to leave a thin, glossy sweet-salty coat. Because it starts from cold, firm rice, it is a practical way to use up leftovers.
The ingredient list is short enough to make this a handy way to use up brined cabbage left over at kimchi-making time. Each leaf gets a thin batter, just enough that the veins still show through, and the thick stem ends are pounded flat with the back of a knife. Cooked napa cabbage tastes noticeably sweeter than raw.
Every bite mixes two temperatures: warm, savory slices of egg-battered beef on top of cold, sweet-sour gochujang noodles. If the thin beef is floured while still damp, the egg coating lifts and slides off in the pan.
In Tochigi, leftover rice gets a second life: soaked in water, kneaded with flour and miso along with corn, kounago (tiny sand lance fish), aonori seaweed and toasted sesame, then pan-cooked into thick oval cakes. The outside turns lightly browned and firm while the center stays chewy, somewhere between a rice cake and a savory pancake. Drain the soaked rice too thoroughly and it will not bind with the flour, leaving cakes that crumble while shaping.
Fine strands of beet and onion, held together by a light coat of potato starch and pancake mix, fry into a thin pancake where the red shreds stay visible. The beet's deep color makes browning hard to read, which sets it apart from other jeon. The cue for turning is the outer edge instead, where the wet batter should look dry.
Perilla seed powder has a heavier nuttiness than sesame with a slightly bitter finish, and in this jeon its aroma actually gets stronger once the pancake cools. Before they meet the batter, the oyster and shiitake mushrooms spend a minute in a dry pan to drive off their water. Soy sauce in the batter means it is seasoned enough to eat without a dipping sauce.
King oyster and shiitake mushrooms go into the same pan together. The batter is only a thin coat, so once fried, the mushrooms' aroma and chewy grain come through ahead of any taste of flour.
Ground mung bean batter, mixed with kimchi, bean sprouts and pork, is fried in small rounds the way market stalls do it, with no holding back on the oil. Well-fermented kimchi gives it a sour edge, and it is dipped in soy sauce cut with vinegar.
Squid chews dense and shrimp snaps springy, so each piece of this pancake bites a little differently depending on what it holds. The seafood gives off water as it cooks, which is why a little of the batter water is held back from the start.
Garlic chives make up most of this pancake, with just a little carrot and onion. The batter is loose enough to run off a spoon, and instead of one big pancake it is spread thin in several small ones. Small rounds are easier to keep even and to support on the spatula when flipping.
Well-aged sour kimchi, garlic chives and thinly sliced cheongyang chili go into a batter that also takes 40 ml of kimchi brine, which turns it red before it ever reaches the pan.
There is more shrimp than chives here, 200 g of it, and it is chopped coarsely with a knife so every bite still has some snap. Two eggs in the batter hold all that shrimp together when the pancake is flipped.
Plenty of finely chopped garlic chives go into the ground beef, so these bite-sized jeon come out flecked with green. Tofu squeezed dry makes them softer than meat alone, and the soy sauce and sesame oil seasoning still tastes clear once they have cooled.
Burdock root cut into matchsticks is mixed with onion cut the same width, and the batter only coats the outside of the strips. A little tempura flour in the pancake mix crisps the edges almost as if they were deep-fried, while the burdock keeps its crunch.
Long green onions cut to the length of the pan form the base layer here, with squid, shrimp and mussel meat on top and only enough thin batter to fill the gaps. Unlike a pajeon where batter covers everything, the scallions carry the structure, and each slice shows stacked layers of onion and shellfish.
Canned tuna and aged kimchi go in by equal weight with only a small amount of pancake batter, and the filling, not the flour, is what comes through first. The tuna is pressed in a strainer right after the can is opened to get the oil out.
Drained canned tuna and perilla leaves give these fritters more heft than a vegetable jeon but less than a fish one. The egg in the batter binds the tuna and gives a smooth surface, and the fritters hold up well cold in a lunchbox.
The clam meat is drained well before it goes into the batter, yet as the pancake cooks it still releases salty juice that carries a clam flavor through every part. It is made as one large round about 20 cm across and cut into six to eight pieces.
Steamed kabocha is mashed while hot, kneaded with glutinous rice flour and pressed into small flat rounds for the pan. A little sugar makes them closer to a snack than a side dish, and the rice flour gives the inside a chewy, rice-cake texture.
The pollock jeon on Korean holiday tables is usually made from frozen fillets. Thawed pollock gives off more water than you would expect, and pressing it well with paper towels is what lets the egg coating stick.
Firm tofu is sliced about 1 cm thick, pressed under a weight for at least 15 minutes, then seasoned with salt and pepper. Soy sauce stays on the side for dipping instead of being poured over. Hot from the pan the egg coating is lightly crisp, and it softens as it cools.
Aralia shoots are around only briefly in spring, and this jeon gives them just a thin coat of flour and egg to keep their bitter, herbal fragrance in front. Before frying they are blanched for 30 seconds in boiling water with a little vinegar to take off the harsh edge.
Eggplant cut into 7 mm rounds steams in its own moisture while the egg coating sets, and the inside turns soft as custard. At Chuseok many families fry these alongside zucchini jeon for the ancestral table.
The eggplant is salted and blotted dry, and the ground pork is cooked first with onion and garlic, then cooled before it goes into the batter. Because the meat is never raw in the pan, even thick rounds cook evenly to the center, and the softened eggplant stays moist between bits of pork.