Mung Bean PancakeBindaetteok

The first time I tasted a proper bindaetteok was at Gwangjang Market in Seoul — one of Korea's oldest traditional markets, a covered arcade of food stalls where haenyeo (sea women) have been selling things for over a hundred years. The bindaetteok vendors there fry in well-seasoned pans darkened from decades of use, and the result is something crackling and rich, with crispy edges that shatter when you bite into them.

I was there with a friend from Lithuania named Matas, who was doing a travel documentary project on street food markets in Asia. He'd been filming people eating for weeks and was getting a little food-confused, struggling to taste each new thing on its own terms. Bindaetteok stopped him cold. He looked at it for a moment — thick, round, golden, steam rising — and asked what was in it. 'Mung beans, kimchi, bean sprouts.' He shook his head like that couldn't be right. Too much flavor for so few things.

The secret is in the batter texture. The mung beans shouldn't be blended completely smooth — you want it grainy, almost coarse. This creates pockets and irregularities that get extra crispy in the oil. A too-smooth batter makes a dense pancake that's soft in the middle. And the oil is not optional. Bindaetteok needs generous oil to develop that crackling outer crust. The commercial stalls use quite a lot — don't be shy at home.

Matas ended up filming the whole vendor sequence for his documentary and later told me it became one of his favorite scenes. 'The sound of it cooking,' he said. 'Like applause.'