How to Make Homemade Breakfast Essentials like Easy Pancakes and Creamy Scrambled Eggs

[Music] today on america's test kitchen julia and bridget make the easiest pancakes from scratch lisa reviews syrup dispensers jack challenges bridget to a tasting of turkey bacon dan explores the science of browning and becky cooks julia creamy french style scrambled eggs it's all coming up right here on america's test kitchen [Music] a little bit of a test kitchen confidential here i am a lazy cook especially in the mornings i can't bring myself to make pancakes i prefer french toast you dip it you flip it and you eat it but pancakes you got to find a scratch recipe that's really tasty but also easy before the cup of coffee right and we've had a lot of really fussy pancake recipes over the years whipping egg whites they're delicious but i'm not dragging a mixer out before coffee oh yeah so as you know most saturdays i make pancakes with my daughter marta you never invite me over uh yep because i haven't had coffee yet and you know for years i use the same box mix that i like it was low in preservatives but um it didn't taste that great but it kind of didn't matter then this recipe came long changed everything now we make this because it is incredibly easy and it tastes so much better converted you from a box to scratch i did and hopefully for me from french toast pancakes right i don't know that's a little bit of a hurdle we'll try we'll try so we have two bowls a dry bowl and a wet bowl okay okay we're gonna start with the dry bowl here i have two cups of flour to this i'm gonna add three tablespoons of sugar and that's just all-purpose flour right ap flour not a specialty flour okay good so next we're gonna add one of the leaveners this is baking powder we're gonna add four teaspoons that's quite a bit that's a lot it's most double than what you find in other recipes but we wanted really tall fluffy pancakes and that's one of the ways you get that to this i'm gonna add a teaspoon of salt last but definitely not least some baking soda so we already have the leavener in there from the baking powder this is half a teaspoon of baking soda adds a little bit of tang which is really important for a pancake also helps with browning just half teaspoon is all you need now a lot of times when i make this recipe i make it two batches and i put one in a zipper lock bag and then i write the rest of the ingredients on it so next weekend shhh even easier creating your own box mix exactly all right on to the wet ingredients we have two eggs to this we're going to add a quarter cup of vegetable oil i like adding this before i add the milk that just helps break up the yolks without getting too splattering now we're gonna add some milk this is one and a half cups of milk so last but not least a little bit of vanilla this is half a teaspoon of vanilla again pretty crucial to making a good tasting pancake all right now the really hard part we're gonna put one into two gorgeous no folding no whipping the hardest part about this recipe is not over whisking this because again we want tall pancakes and one thing we found is that when you make this too smooth you actually get a batter that's more runny and you want a thick batter and that looks like a mistake it does especially before coffee but actually this is good because the lumps make a thicker batter of course you can make a thicker batter with less liquid but that makes them dry so those lumps of flour they need to hydrate so they're sitting and hydrating but keeping the batter nice and thick which makes taller pancakes all right and how long we have to let this rest for 10 minutes all right it's been 10 minutes we're coughing up and ready to start cooking now i want to show you the texture of this batter see how clumpy and thick it is that's good because that means nice tall fluffy pancakes all right if you could put that in the sink for me please i can do that all right now we're ready to start cooking and i'm going to use a griddle because it's perfect for pancakes you can do six pancakes at once you could use a non-stick pan but you'd have to do about three at a time yeah well we've got a whole bus full of truckers coming over they're expecting some serious banking hungry they're hungry so i'm going to pour a half a teaspoon of vegetable oil all over this griddle and then i'm going to take a piece of paper towel and smooth it out so it's a nice even film of oil across the whole surface because you know how sometimes you get spotty pancakes that's because you have puddles of oil wherever there's a puddle of oil it's preventing the heat from transferring from the pan up and that's a light spot interesting i know right and i have this griddle set to 350 degrees but we're gonna test it with a test pancake so a tablespoon of the batter right into the center of the griddle and we're gonna cook it for one minute to see how hot the griddle is all right so it's been about a minute let's take a look at our test pancake it's a beautiful golden now that's only been a minute the big pancakes will take a bit longer all right i'm going to set this guy aside and now i'm going to make six pancakes this is a spring-loaded portion scoop and it makes it really easy to make pancakes of the same size if you didn't have this you just use a quarter cup measure you just want to make sure to smooth it out to a nice four inch round but that batter really is nice and thick you can see because it's not spreading too much if it was you'd end up with a that's it thick batters make tall pancakes now these are gonna cook for about two to three minutes on this first side then we're going to flip them over and cook them for about a minute or two on the second side usually by the time i get the last one down we're pretty close to the first one being ready to flow okay all right so it's been about two minutes on this first side let's take a peek you can see because they're a little bit set around the edge oh that's a pretty color all right that's what we're looking for a nice golden brown oh yeah now the key to flipping you got to keep the spatula low to the griddle and then if it hits another pancake don't worry let it set and then push it away these look good now the second side doesn't take as long as the first side only one to two minutes on this side all right now my house would eat them right off the griddle they barely hit a plate but if you wanted to have a polite breakfast where everyone sits down together the easy thing to do is keep these pancakes warm in an oven 200 degree oven put them on a wire rack and then everyone can eat together all right so these will go in the warm oven and then i'll come back and i'll cook the remaining pancakes sounds good all right so a proper breakfast where we eat at the same time this recipe in theory serves four to six people so four pancakes for you i'm gonna give you a nice stack of three is that what you call a short stack or a tall stack that's a short step i have a surprise for you not only do i have syrup a little bit of a compound butter now this is like a saturday sunday sort of breakfast so compound butter is just a stick of softened butter with some flavorings and here i have almond and orange and it's delicious on pancakes you're just gonna you're gonna have to trust me on this i'm just gonna put a little this orange almond butter you can find that recipe on our website at americastestkitchen.com a little bit of syrup beautiful gorgeous mmm all right oh i love the first bite right down between the three pancakes no time like the present my darling all right mm-hmm very tender so fluffy which is so surprising and fluffy you're right which is so surprising because you did not whisk egg whites until they were fluffy and then have to fold them in right and that little bit of butter on there is pretty nice it just adds a little bit of flavor with the maple syrup and i have to confess i'm looking for a lump you know i keep expecting i'm going to bite into this pocket of dry flour no i'm considering changing my mind about pancakes yeah just based on this and there's so much better tasting than any box mix out there none of those off flavors no preservatives which i personally like julia you and your pancakes have rocked my world awesome glad to hear it i mean who knew being a lazy cook can pay off welcome to team pancake there you go if you want to be on team pancake well just have to whisk flour sugar and leaveners and eggs and oil with milk and keep that batter lumpy now let it rest while you have a cup of coffee or two then cook the pancakes on a lightly oiled griddle until browned on both sides serve with some maple syrup or even an easy orange almond butter so from our test kitchen to your kitchen the perfect pancakes you can eat any time easy pancakes and they're even better with butter and syrup i mean i need a little more syrup let me hook you up here oh yeah [Music] maple syrup dispensers have one job to pour sticky stuff neatly they should be easy to fill and clean and they should pour just the amount you want without too much dripping we bought these five priced from eight to forty two dollars and we tried them with hot cold and room temperature syrup on both real pancakes and circles drawn on parchment to test precision the bottom line some of these made a drippy mess it's dripping down the front it's coming back down the handle it's sticky under here jackson pollock would feel right at home and you'd never want the kids using them but our winner was great it has a comfortable handle it lets you pour precisely without hand strain and it closes right up it's glass and it cleans in the dishwasher this is the american metal craft beehive syrup dispenser for eight dollars and your syrup problems are solved [Music] i love a good oxymoron here's a few of them for you about pretty ugly or found missing or the always questionable great depression speaking of depression i've got another one for you it's turkey bacon those two words should never belong together but luckily jack's here he's going to educate me on turkey bacon and let us know which brand is worth buying i love the way you think this is an oxymoron um there are actually two paths to turkey bacon and i'm not going to say turkey bacon greatness okay because that would be another oxymoron i will temper my expectations how about that you should definitely temper your expectations i mean i will say that of all of the people who work here at america's test kitchen no one loves bacon more than you it's kind of true so before you start tasting or if you want to start tasting it's up to you let me explain there are two different ways to make turkey bacon and i have raw strips here one is they use ground meat they grind up the dark meat they grind up the white meat they add the seasonings the brine it's like cake batter that they layer into a pan and then slice that would be this style here with ground meat okay the other starts with chunks of turkey thigh one or two inch pieces that they put in a tumbler and they add all the spices they add the brine and then they press it all together in a mold that would be more like maybe canadian bacon sure okay so this didn't actually impact our overall ratings okay so we liked some of each if you can use the word light of each style the bigger thing was about flavor how close they came now as you're tasting think about what does bacon give you it gives you meatiness it gives you salt gives you smoke gives you sweetness and preference one more thing to that one more thing drippings droopings yeah you're not getting anything all right um which i want to talk about um the biggest thing that we probably wanted from these samples and what separated the winners and i would also put that in quotation marks from the losers is um a lack of defects some of these had some weird weird flavors that did not hit with salt smoke sugar or meat and so if you are tasting these and picking up something odd your taste buds are working there are some odd flavors in here that don't belong in any bacon made with any kind of meat interesting thing about cooking and the drippings we were cooking these per the manufacturer's instructions in a dry skillet we strongly recommend that you actually put a little bit of vegetable oil in that skillet you'll get better contact between the meat and the pan better browning so you're enjoying yourself i can tell well it's meat right i'm going to give it that now it's salt to compare it to bacon i'm not even going to say pork bacon bacon by default comes from the belly last time i looked at the turkey's belly there was nothing that looked like this that came from that area oh it's just a bunch of feathers they're all quite hammy not as bacony that's definitely for sure yeah i think if you grew up eating canadian bacon these get closer to that definition so anything that you are i'm not sure i should use the word liking but anything that is more appealing okay well this is not appealing but this is almost like plasticine you know it's just rubbery it's almost stretchable as i was chewing it like food should not stretch as i'm eating it not not fan of that one this one is uh quite canadian bacony as a to use a word i long for christmas i long for crunch i long for a little bit of fat in my bacon it feels very lean so one time i ordered eggs out and it came out i said what is that it was a taste in it somebody had left a cigarette on my dish that's what that tastes like okay so so i don't like that one okay just to be clear i'm gonna say you can never ever have bacon again and you're only eating turkey bacon the rest of your life which one are you choosing uh i would eat the plate underneath it but if i had to choose probably this one you want to see what you chose yeah well you agree with the expert panel this is the winner in quotation marks from wilshire farms it is a chunk style the kind that's tumbled you can see the meat in there i think that's what appealed to me so this one is only made with turkey thigh there's no white meat in it and there are no horrible defects it's not close to real bacon but there's no defects now what is this one that has the little curl serrations here um that was at the bottom of the rankings it's from butterball so they know from turkey yup i'm not sure they know from bacon right right um they're like turkey smoked turkey ribbons would have actually been a great name then they would have had to compare it to bacon and then this one uh so this is from jenny o this was actually the runner up too smokey like too ashy too smoky not my favorite at all sure yeah yeah okay you didn't hate all three of them it's so true but if these were the only things left in the world my blt would quickly become an lt on that happy note well if you love turkey bacon and i know so many of you do well why don't you try out our winner it's welsh shire all natural uncured turkey bacon 6.99 for a 12 ounce package what do pancakes and burgers have in common they are both a lot more delicious when they're nice and brown it's pretty obvious that this burger and this pancake feature better browning than the others and browning equals big flavor these are definitely the ones that i would like to eat now you can see that they're all cooking on the exact same griddle and they're actually identical except for one ingredient baking soda that's right i added a small amount of baking soda to this pancake and this burger now it's not that the baking soda itself is browning it's that it's making the food brown better the browning on burgers and pancakes is a result of the mayard reaction that's when sugars and the amino acids that make up protein come together in the presence of heat to form hundreds of new flavor compounds and that reaction occurs best in an alkaline environment or when the ph is high and baking soda raises the ph so if your baked goods turn out paler than you want next time try adding a quarter to a half teaspoon of baking soda not for lift but for better browning and same goes for your next beef roast when you season with salt and pepper try adding one teaspoon of baking soda for every three pounds of meat you'll have better browning and a much more flavorful crust [Music] i love a good cup of coffee in the morning but i don't like coffee stains in my mug here's a great solution to remove those stains take one tablespoon of baking powder and combine it with one and a half teaspoons of water and stir to make a paste use the rough side of a sponge and that paste to scrub out the inside of your mug this alkaline solution removes acidic stains more effectively than soap and water and just like that with a quick rinse you're ready for your next cup of coffee [Music] american style scrambled eggs are a fast and furious breakfast and they take just a minute or two to cook now the french on the other hand have a very different approach to scrambled eggs they take their time so that the texture winds up very silky and creamy a wee maybe so you're right the french take it nice and slow they usually add a whole lot of butter and the results are these really delicate curds found in a velvety sauce yeah it's a very different consistency yep you really just have to take your time and they're delicious i'm going to show you how to make them all right we found a way to do it without all the butter i'm going to start by preheating a skillet here that's a 10 inch nonstick skillet i'm going to give us some low heat now a 10 inch skillet crucial here can you use a 12 inch skillet no you want to use a 10 inch skillet we have prepared the recipe to match a certain number of eggs and the timing is all worked out so make sure you use your small skillet okay and that has two tablespoons of water in it water when the water starts to steam that's going to be our indication that the pan is hot enough to add the eggs all right so different right from the get-go no butter water yeah so i have eight large eggs in my bowl here and i'm adding half teaspoon salt i'm just gonna whip these up while our pan heats up and now usually you'd add a little water or milk or something to the eggs to give them a consistency but i don't see any other bowls around nothing else is going in the french might add a little cream but not us not us are you looking for something specific are you just going zen i'm enjoying myself right i'm kind of zoning out on the eggs so i don't want to see any streaks of white left i want to be uniform so you can see the water is steaming that's our indication so we'll put all the eggs in the pan so the water is also going to dilute the egg proteins a little bit so they don't coagulate too fast so be nice and creamy that's right that's the key to nice creamy eggs no butter but just taking it nice and low and slow well this is really low i mean the eggs aren't even coagulating on the outside that's right these are some mellow eggs so we're gonna go for four minutes we're gonna get super mellow by the end of this recipe it's gonna take 12 to 14 minutes wow so we should add some coffee out here we need to settle in and take our time and we can chit chat while we make our eggs i'm actually going to start the timer so i know when four minutes are up i think this is what i'm going to call weekend eggs yes definitely perfect for a weekend so i just want to start constantly now for four minutes scraping the edges of the pan getting the bottom so it's been about three and a half minutes i know it barely looks any different it is thickening up a tiny bit and you can see steam is coming up off the pan if we didn't see steam at this point we would turn up the heat just a tiny little bit okay okay so this is right we're doing it exactly right trust me it does look a little darker and there are a few curds cooked in there yep but not much different than four minutes ago yeah you'll see it start to thicken up in a little bit here so that's been our first four minutes so let's do four more they still look raw what are you doing they are still raw but just hang in i told you it was going to take 12 to 14 minutes and we'll keep on stirring nice and gentle here if any large curds do start to form i'm going to smash them right away okay spatula no large curds allowed that's right this is about small and delicate we could have these for dinner as well that's what they do in france oh so that makes sense if you want lots of wine some vegetables totally salad so think of it as a 12 minute dinner i'm with you just hang in there with me they're gonna be worth it it'll be worth it all right we got six to eight more minutes i'm with you hang tight i'm with you okay all right so it's been eight minutes let's do four more i don't have any real cards starting to form here so i'm just going to turn up the heat a tiny little bit all right just to get a little more action going not too much we still have to be patient yeah and there's still steam coming up off the surface and there's a few curds in there yep actually that did the trick you can see it's starting to happen now oh yeah there's a large curd squash it i'm smashing it no large curds allowed you want to make sure you scrape the sides of the pan here so now you can see they're starting to thicken up here the texture is changing they're not as watery the time is up i can tell they're done because the eggs are basically holding their position when i put them on one side of the skillet but you can see they're still super loose so creamy creamy so i'm betting you want to get those out of the skillet right away yes but first i'm going to add one more tablespoon of water all right and that's going to prevent the eggs from tasting gluten and also a tablespoon of minced parsley you could use chives or tarragon whatever you like i'm just going to stir them vigorously now just to keep them nice and creamy break up any large curds that have formed it's amazing there's no butter in there i know isn't that crazy they look buttery they look creamy and they're gonna taste super creamy too and those are done they're gorgeous thank you let me service up here they look so rich they are so creamy so different from what we're used to right yeah but i kind of like that they're different yeah you want to have buttered toast with this to give a little textural contrast and get some butter in there too right i'm going gonna taste the eggs just on their own to start me too i can't believe there's no butter in here so creamy they're so rich well you know what's so interesting is that it looks like a sauce i know they look almost under done but because of that nice slow cooking they've come up all the way up to 160 so they're totally safe now i'm going to eat it like i would at home piece of toast um yeah and i was making fun of them just a little bit at the beginning because it was so low and slow but i have to say it is totally worth it these eggs are out of this world yeah well done becky thank you something new something new so if you want to make super creamy french style eggs beat the eggs with salt to completely blended and heat the skillet over low heat with water once you add the eggs to the skillet stir constantly for 12 minutes over low heat to ensure that the small delicate curds form and finish with a bit more water and parsley and there you have it from america's desk kitchen to your kitchen creamy french style scrambled eggs i'm in love with these oh good thanks for watching america's test kitchen what'd you think well leave a comment and let us know which recipes you're excited to make or you can just say hello you can find links to today's recipes and reviews in the video description and don't forget to subscribe to our channel see you later i'll see you later

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 506,758

Keywords: creamy scrambled eggs, easy pancakes, pancakes, pancake recipes, how to make scrambled eggs, cooks illustrated, americas test kitchen

Id: vLp3AK6jEM8

Length: 22min 56sec (1376 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 24 2020