Can’t have enough crepes or just can’t do anything with some leftover? Savory crepes are here to make a delicious solutions for both of that!
When people think of crepes the first thought must be of something sweet served as a dessert in a fancy restaurant. Or maybe if someone was lucky enough to visit Paris then mentioning crepes will flood our mind with slightly smiling street food vendors spreading nutella at a random corner of a charming street in the french capital.
Strangely enough when we think of tortilla wraps we don’t generally associate them with sweet tastes either. We still call the flour tortillas to tortillas although practically those are crepes. Depending on how we prepare our crepes of course.
Crepes has a long tradition all over the world from the beginning of the times or at least from the beginning of the wheat era as this is so simple food that this must have been the first type of meals that being baked or fried ever on a stone. In the English language crêpe came from the french but the french borrowed it from the latin language where “crispa” meant to describe a greek dessert: “Tiganitai” with creases. Tiagitani in greek means pancake so there we have it, the crepes are pancakes with creases or creased pancakes. No fancy french word is needed to describe this dish anymore.
Crepes are generally sweet throughout the English speaking world. There are some wicked nations on earth though, who are experimenting with savory flavors or even filling meat inside these thin waffels and not calling them wraps. Central Europeans go so far that they even rename it to “palachinta” or something similar depending of the country. The word comes through the Romanian “plăcintă” which comes from the latin “palacenta” word meaning “small flat cake”. How original are these naming conventions.
Anyway, we are going to concentrate on a particular dish now which peculiarity is that the country’s national dish is stuffed into it. How awesome is that! It’s like stuffing a turkey into a crepe or a Hamburger into a crepe…
So this is a Hungarian dish called Hortobagyi Palacsinta on it’s native tongue which translates to Crepe from Hortobagy. Hungarians are famous for eating everything with paprika and sour cream. Even crepes apparently. Paprika is a type of red pepper grown, harvested and prepared in Hungary which could be sweet or hot. Generally it isn’t eaten raw but used only as a spice. It has a unique taste which blends together with onion, tomato and the sour cream really splendidly. Well, what doesn’t blend together with sour cream? This is what sour cream does. Makes dishes awesome.
It was made for a World Fair in 1958 and originally made from Veal but there aren’t really restrictions on the choices of meat. In practice this dish is prepared when there leftovers of the traditional main dish the “pörkölt” which is a name for any kind of meat stew prepared with onion, tomato, garlic and paprika.
In case we start from scratch the fastest way is to begin with ground meat. Otherwise, we should have to cut the meat into small pieces before filling them into the crepe.
Depending on the form we choose to present the crepe we can use various amount of fillings. Tightly rolled up crepes like above can’t take much more than 2 oz / 60g filling per crepe which would yield about eight crepes. In case we would like to serve less carbs then we can choose to fill only one crepe with 4 oz / 110g of filling then fold it to a square bun. Both would be equally delicious.
Ingredients
Filling
- 1 medium / 110g Onion (diced)
- 2 tablespoons / 30g Cooking oil
- 1 teaspoon / 5g Salt
- 1 teaspoon / 2gBlack pepper
- 1 clove / 3g Garlic
- 1lb / 500g Ground meat
- 2 medium / 250g Tomatoes
- 1 medium / 100g Green pepper (sliced)(optional)
- 1 tablespoon / 7g Paprika
- 1 tablespoon / 15g Sour Cream
Crepes
Check out: Easy Crepes Recipe
- 2 cups / 400g Flour
- 2 tablespoons / 30g Cooking oil
- 1/2 teaspoon / 3g Salt
- 4 cups / 900g Water
- ¼ teaspoon / Baking soda (not baking powder)
How to make savory crepes
Filling
- Dice the onion up.
- Pour olive oil into a frying pan and heat it up. Add the onion and salt into the hot oil. Stir it while cooking until it gets a translucent, glassy look.
- Add black pepper, garlic and the ground meat.
- Add the tomato, green pepper and the paprika on top. Be careful not to fry the paprika as it burns quickly and can ruin the whole dish in a second.
- Stir in ¼ cup water to then put the lid on.When it starts to boil turn the heat down. Let it simmer slowly until the tomatoes break down while stirring it every now and then. This takes around 30-40 minutes. If tomato sauce or chopped tomato is used then it needs only about 20 minutes until the flavors blend together nicely.
- When the meat is ready stir in the sour cream and let it simmer a minute more before taking it off from the heat.
Crepes
- While the meat is cooking we can get the crepes ready. Measure all the ingredients in a big bowl.
- Mix everything together with a blender, a whisk or even a fork.
- Start making crepes by pouring a ladle full of batter into the pan then make the batter covering the whole pan by tilting it around.
- When one side gets a couple of golden brown spots flip it over. In case a bit of help needed:
In case a bit of help needed:Assembly
- Fill the crepes with the meat and roll them up or just fold them into squares. Pour some of the sauce from the meat on top then it’s ready to be served.
Enjoy!
Note: As it may take some time to prepare all the crepes we run the risk of serving a cold dish. This would be quite a shame given that how much effort we have put into it so far. Placing them into a 400°F / 200°C preheated oven for 10 minutes in a big enough heat resistant cook pot would solve this issue. When placing the crepes into the oven we have to pour sauce over them richly to prevent them to dry out. This will require additional sauce and needs to be planned beforehand. At least an extra ½ cup / 100ml water and 1 cup / 200ml sour cream needed for the stew the have enough liquid at the end.
There are more things to wrap our food around!
Savory Crepe Recipe
Ingredients
Filling
- 1 medium Onion diced
- 2 tablespoons Cooking oil
- 1 teaspoon Salt
- 1 teaspoon Black pepper
- 1 clove Garlic
- 1 lb Ground meat
- 2 medium Tomato
- 1 medium Green pepper sliced(optional)
- 1 tablespoon Paprika
- 1 tablespoon Sour Cream
Crepes
- 4 cups Flour
- 2 tablespoons Oil
- ½ teaspoon Salt
- 4 cups Water
- ¼ teaspoon Baking soda
Instructions
Filling
- Dice the onion up.
- Pour olive oil into a frying pan and heat it up. Add the onion and salt into the hot oil. Stir it while cooking until it gets a translucent, glassy look.
- Add black pepper, garlic and the ground meat.
- Add the tomato, green pepper and the paprika on top. Be careful not to fry the paprika as it burns quickly and can ruin the whole dish in a second.
- Stir in ¼ cup water to then put the lid on.When it starts to boil turn the heat down. Let it simmer slowly until the tomatoes break down while stirring it every now and then. This takes around 30-40 minutes. If tomato sauce or chopped tomato is used then it needs only about 20 minutes until the flavors blend together nicely.
- When the meat is ready stir in the sour cream and let it simmer a minute more before taking it off from the heat.
Crepes
- While the meat is cooking we can get the crepes ready. Measure all the ingredients in a big bowl.
- Mix flour, cooking oil, salt, water and baking soda together with a blender, a whisk or even a fork.
- Start making crepes by pouring a ladle full of batter into the pan then make the batter covering the whole pan by tilting it around.
- When one side gets a couple of golden brown spots flip it over.
Assembly
- Fill the crepes with the meat and roll them up or just fold them into squares. Pour some of the sauce from the meat on top then it’s ready to be served.
Notes
Nutrition
Pin now, Enjoy later!
Now, that’s what I’m talking about! Meat and crepes! Yeah!
Wow! It’s like wrap isn’t it?