Bhutan & Buckwheat
I find myself now traveling on to southeast Asia as I arrive in Bhutan. This was another tough country to find a pancake recipe for. I found information on what they use to make their pancakes, buckwheat, but it was a challenge finding out much more than that.
I did learn that Bhutan is a landlocked country that has arid areas where rice can't be grown. It is in these areas that buckwheat is grown. I also found many yummy sounding recipes from the country, but none of them were for pancakes. I also learned the name for Bhutan pancakes, they are called khuli. However, like with the last country, having the name of the pancake didn't help me find a recipe for it.
Most of what I learned about buckwheat agriculture and use in Bhutan came from an article published by the Bhutan Ministry of Agriculture. If you want to read up on it, check it out here. If you don't want to read up on it, I'll copy and paste the part I used to try to make khuli. It literally says to make khuli this way:
So armed with this knowledge, I headed off to find some buckwheat. Of course, none of the grocery stores nearby had it so I ended up all the way across town at Whole Foods once again. There I found a package of buckwheat. I had to grind the buckwheat into a flour using the blender. Yay Blendtec! Originally, the buckwheat looked like this:
Once we finished grinding it, it looked like this:
I didn't grind the whole package of buckwheat, I only ground about 3 cups. I ended up with a little bit more than 2 1/2 cups of ground buckwheat once it was all said and done. After grinding the buckwheat, I added a little bit of water to make the batter. I also added a small amount of salt. Since I wanted a slightly thicker, spongy pancake I didn't add too much water. This is what the consistency of the batter looked like:
I let the batter sit for an hour as suggested by the agriculture ministry. After an hour, I was ready to cook the khuli. As stated in the quote from the agriculture ministry, I cooked the pancakes in butter.
This is what they looked like when all cooked:
They looked tasty, but they weren't very tasty. There was something off in the texture, as these definitely weren't spongy as described in the Bhutan publication. So I decided to thin out the batter and make them more crepe like. After adding more water to thin the batter, I pulled out the crepe pan and began cooking them in the usual crepe way.
These tasted quite a bit better, but they were lacking substance. So we decided to scramble up some eggs to put inside and sprinkled the eggs with some Mexican blend cheese I had in the refrigerator.
While I'm sure these aren't a completely Bhutanese version of pancakes, they did taste decent after I stuffed them with eggs and cheese.
Anyone know of a better Bhutan khuli recipe?
I did learn that Bhutan is a landlocked country that has arid areas where rice can't be grown. It is in these areas that buckwheat is grown. I also found many yummy sounding recipes from the country, but none of them were for pancakes. I also learned the name for Bhutan pancakes, they are called khuli. However, like with the last country, having the name of the pancake didn't help me find a recipe for it.
Most of what I learned about buckwheat agriculture and use in Bhutan came from an article published by the Bhutan Ministry of Agriculture. If you want to read up on it, check it out here. If you don't want to read up on it, I'll copy and paste the part I used to try to make khuli. It literally says to make khuli this way:
After adding water into flour a batter is made. The batter is then poured onto the griddle toasted with butter. Batter for khuli is usually prepared at least an hour in advance mainly to give the pancakes a spongy consistence.
So armed with this knowledge, I headed off to find some buckwheat. Of course, none of the grocery stores nearby had it so I ended up all the way across town at Whole Foods once again. There I found a package of buckwheat. I had to grind the buckwheat into a flour using the blender. Yay Blendtec! Originally, the buckwheat looked like this:
Once we finished grinding it, it looked like this:
I didn't grind the whole package of buckwheat, I only ground about 3 cups. I ended up with a little bit more than 2 1/2 cups of ground buckwheat once it was all said and done. After grinding the buckwheat, I added a little bit of water to make the batter. I also added a small amount of salt. Since I wanted a slightly thicker, spongy pancake I didn't add too much water. This is what the consistency of the batter looked like:
I let the batter sit for an hour as suggested by the agriculture ministry. After an hour, I was ready to cook the khuli. As stated in the quote from the agriculture ministry, I cooked the pancakes in butter.
This is what they looked like when all cooked:
They looked tasty, but they weren't very tasty. There was something off in the texture, as these definitely weren't spongy as described in the Bhutan publication. So I decided to thin out the batter and make them more crepe like. After adding more water to thin the batter, I pulled out the crepe pan and began cooking them in the usual crepe way.
These tasted quite a bit better, but they were lacking substance. So we decided to scramble up some eggs to put inside and sprinkled the eggs with some Mexican blend cheese I had in the refrigerator.
While I'm sure these aren't a completely Bhutanese version of pancakes, they did taste decent after I stuffed them with eggs and cheese.
Anyone know of a better Bhutan khuli recipe?
Hey, I cam across your blog when I was googling recipes for buckwheat pancakes to add to my post about...visiting Bhutan! As you may already know, the pancakes from many countries are used for lunch or dinner to scoop up lentils or spinach or whatever. That's why khuli is a bit uninspiring as you noted. Also, I read your Bolivia recipe and was super bummed that in my two years there, I was never served one. Have you done avocado pancakes? I had a friend cook me some last year and they were definitely interesting!
ReplyDeleteHi Lenni, Thanks for commenting. The Bolivian pancakes were quite tasty. We haven't tried avocado pancakes, but if you have a good recipe, please share!
Delete