How to Make the Easiest Pancakes Ever

[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 on 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 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 even easier creating your own box minutes 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 it getting too splattering now we're going to 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 coughed 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 nonstick 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 hungry they're hungry so i'm gonna pour a half a teaspoon of vegetable oil all over this griddle and then i'm gonna 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 for 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 crep that's it thick batters make tall pancakes now these are going to 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 flip 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 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 we 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 uh 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 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 gonna 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 all 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 in 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 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: 2,547,313

Keywords: pancakes, easy recipes, pancake recipes, how to make pancakes, recipe, cooks illustrated, americas test kitchen

Id: Lm2dq55phHo

Length: 8min 5sec (485 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 19 2020