Our Taste of Home: Danbing
by Amanda
One of my family’s favorite breakfast dishes is 蛋餅 (danbing). It is a simple dish made with egg, scallions, and a wrap. While the dish is simple, you can also add different fillings inside as you like. My personal favorites are the classic corn and ham with some grilled onions. However, in my family, the fillings often end up being whatever we have in our refrigerator at the time. So we would experiment with different things such as tuna, basil, and turkey. This helps to keep our weekly danbing breakfast more interesting.
To make the basic danbing, first heat up a pan at medium heat. While the pan is heating, crack an egg into a small bowl and mix some chopped scallions inside. The amount of scallions depends on how much you like scallions! We like to add a large tablespoon of chopped scallions to our egg. At this point, check on the pan to see if it’s heated up already, then add a bit of oil to the pan and let that heat up a bit as well. While you’re waiting, beat the egg and scallion mixture then season with salt and pepper. Once the mixture is done, the oil should be hot enough and ready for our wrap. Place a pre-made danbing wrap or tortilla onto the pan until it is golden brown at the bottom. We usually like to buy pre-made danbing wrap, but we also use tortillas if we don’t have any danbing wraps at home. When the wrap is golden brown on one side, flip the wrap onto a plate and pour the egg mixture into the pan. Once the egg mixture is in the pan, place your wrap back on the egg mixture with the golden brown side touching the egg mixture. Let it sit in the pan for a bit then flip the danbing to cook the egg and wrap to your liking. Our family likes our danbing on the crispier side so we usually like to cook it a little longer. When the danbing is cooked to how you like it, fold it up into a long rectangular roll and place it on a plate. Afterward, take a cooking scissor and cut the danbing into bite-sized pieces. You can then enjoy it hot with some soy paste or sweet chili sauce.
This dish is something that continues to remind me of Taiwan where my family would have breakfast at the local breakfast shop on our weekend mornings. Now, we simply make it at home for breakfast on the weekends. Although this dish reminds my family of Taiwan, it is also different from the traditional Taiwanese danbing. We have tweaked it to reflect more of our family than any physical place the dish can be tethered to. This to me, is what makes the dish so special to me and my family.
