The Korean Way to Make Canned Biscuits 10x Better

Try as you might, grocery store products like canned biscuits are hard to resist. They’re really easy to bake and cost much less per can and serving than it would if you make biscuits from scratch (butter is pricey these days!) As a ready to bake product, most package directions will have you pop open a can, space each piece of dough on a baking sheet and pop them in the oven. But when you learn that you can use canned biscuits to make cinnamon sugar pull apart bread or mini chicken pot pies, you soon find out that just following the rules can be boring. We recently discovered that one way to upgrade canned biscuits is to make an ooey-gooey Korean street food snack: hotteok, or sweet pancakes. 

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What is Hotteok?

A beloved snack in Korea, hotteok is a warm pancake composed of a homemade yeasted dough filled with a sweet and molten mixture of brown sugar and cinnamon plus textural add-ins like seeds and chopped nuts. Each stuffed pancake is pan-fried to become warm, crispy-gooey treat that is truly sugar and spice and everything nice. An American pancake is good, but a Korean pancake? It will knock your socks off.

As a Korean immigrant, believe me when I say the best hotteok are the ones you get on the streets of Korea but sadly that’s easier said than done. (If you’re a regular at Trader Joe’s, you will know the grocery store carries its own version of hotteok but they’re often sold out.) This is where canned biscuits come in. As Korean-American singer Eric Nam taught former Top Chef host and cookbook author Padma Lakshmi, you can easily make hotteok with canned biscuits and a few basic pantry ingredients you may already have for fall baking. 

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How to Make Canned Biscuit Hotteok

In a small bowl mix some brown sugar, cinnamon and some nuts and seeds (like sesame seeds and chopped cashews). Open your can of biscuits then flatten each piece of biscuit dough and place a small spoonful of your cinnamon sugar filling in the center. Gather and pinch the edges of each piece of dough to seal the filling inside. Heat a lightly greased pan with vegetable oil or ghee (clarified butter) over medium heat. Add a few stuffed biscuits depending on the size of your pan, and press them down gently with a spatula. Cook until each side is golden and crispy, about 1-2 minutes per side. Enjoy warm. You can also stuff the pancakes with a spoonful of your favorite jam or nut butter to switch up the flavors. 

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