The Best Pancakes You'll Ever Make | Epicurious 101

I'm Frank Proto I'm a professional chef and coloring instructor and today I'm going to show you the best way to make pancakes at home Frank style I'll be going over techniques to make light fluffy and Airy pancakes so you'll never have to eat flat floppy lifeless pancakes again this is pancakes 101. I make this pancake recipe all the time chances are if you look in your pantry right now you have everything you need to make them from scratch and you should they are that much better when you make them from scratch first thing I like to do is mix my dry ingredients so I have all-purpose flour sugar salt baking powder and baking soda the baking powder and baking soda are a must because that's going to give us our leavening our bubbles and make our pancakes light and fluffy so once I put all the dry ingredients in I get a whisk just to make sure there's no pockets of any one ingredient so our dry ingredients are well mixed next I like to do the wet ingredients I have milk it's measured out I have some vegetable oil or some neutral oil I have a little bit of vanilla I have apple cider vinegar together the apple cider vinegar and the milk kind of make a buttermilk part of the reason I use the milk and the apple cider as opposed to buttermilk is that whenever I buy buttermilk I make one thing with it it sits in the fridge for two weeks and then I end up throwing it away this way I always have vinegar I always have milk I can always make a quick buttermilk on the spot and then I have some eggs eggs not only lend structure they're actually going to give us a little fat and a little bit of leavening to our pancakes I'm going to take my whiskey can make sure that my wet ingredients are beat up so make sure this is mixed really well your yolks are broken up your eggs are combined we have our wet we have our dry now we can mix them together and here's the thing a lot of people will mix pancakes until they are well combined I am not that way what's happening right now is that the liquid ingredients are starting to activate that baking soda and baking powder so I'm just doing the fold make sure it's combined really well and that is it I think I've mixed it maybe 20 25 times we leave it alone lumps are going to be okay here leave it alone this is the last time we are mixing this do not mix it anymore I like my batter to be on the thicker side so that we get nice big bubbles and my pancakes are nice and tall foreign the batter is mixed I have a griddle in front of me it's an electric griddle I love this thing this thing is amazing it's not super expensive pans are round pancakes are round and you can't get a lot on there but with this griddle I could probably make about 10 pancakes at a time feed that hungry crowd really quick couple of things you can use if you don't have a griddle you can buy a cast iron griddle that goes on the stove you can use a non-stick pan or just a saute pan but for the most part this thing works best because you can do a lot at once I want to talk about the fat that I use to cook my pancakes I'll probably get a lot of hate for this but I'm going to say it anyway I like to use whipped salted butter this will give a little saltiness and crispiness to my finished pancake all right let's cook these pancakes I get a nice heaping dollop of butter on there spread it around if your butter gets a little brown that's okay that just means that our pancakes are going to have a little brown butter flavor and that is delicious make sure you have everything you need close by because this will go fairly quick I have my batter but I also have my favorite spoon this is actually called the berry spoon you can use whatever you want people use ice cream Scoops people use teaspoons but I feel like I get just the right amount of batter with this and what I'm going to do is I'm going to scoop my batter try not to disturb the rest of the batter get it onto my griddle I'm not too worried about circles everyone wants perfect circles I don't I also want my pancakes to be a certain size and this Berry spoon gives me the perfect size when you're scooping your pancakes do not be tempted to stir I'm picking up from the side getting a scoop leaving all those bubbles intact in the rest of the batter spread them out a little if you want them super round that's fine I really don't care about round pancakes don't stir put your pancake batter aside don't stir don't stir I have a lot of butter on my griddle and that's what I want I want my pancakes to almost fry around the edges I want that edge to be crispy and delicious and soak up as much butter as possible I like to use a plastic spatula for this don't use metal for this you're going to get scraped and it's not going to be nonstick anymore there is a Temptation a temptation to turn your pancakes too quickly stop relax cleansing breath I'm watching for the bubbles on top to start popping through you can see there's a bubble about the pop there there's a bubble that popped there I want my bubbles to pop up through the pancake and the pancake to be set before I start to flip I think they're ready to go when you get under the pancake right A lot of times people push it and they chase the pancake around you want to get under there quick push and then flip away from you look at that crispy Edge quick push flip away if you flip towards you all that butter is going to Splatter on you so I like to flip away from myself look at how big and light and fluffy these babies are and crispy right next temptation is to start pressing down on these why what are you doing when you do that you are pushing all the bubbles out do not push on your pancakes flip them let them be the only thing I will do is this sometimes I'll move them around a little just to soak up some of that butter a lot of times the first Pancake or the first crepe is the fail no no no not with my pancakes the first pancakes are the best they're the crispiest they got the best edges they got the best color pancakes are done I can tell they're done by this when I push on my pancake they spring back if you push on your pancake and it squishes through and you see batter they are not done you want to see some spring that's because they're light and fluffy and have lots of bubbles let's put these on a plate it's all about the butter and the bubbles just look at that stack of flapjacks when it comes to my pancakes I only eat three part of the reason is because they are filling and I don't hold back on the toppings I use butter and maple syrup get a good maple syrup in my house we argue about this my wife and daughter like pancake syrup which is the fake stuff my son and I like real maple syrup a grade A Amber you can use less of it and get more flavor and that's what I like and there is no substitute for salted whipped butter salt and sweet go well together this is something my grandmother used all the time and I have great memories of salted whipped butter that's what I use it has a really great texture and the saltiness kind of shines through I always put a little on the bottom and then every layer gets a huge knob of butter right like I said I put a lot on there because I am a little bit nuts about my pancakes a nice smear on top and then you can douse it with your syrup don't be shy with the syrup you're going to have to sop everything up and that's what you want to do look this is what I want you to see look at that the butter is starting to melt and mix in with the syrup and it's getting oh my gosh like that is just like the most beautiful pancake pitch you'll ever see melty butter warm syrup and as promised the best way to make pancakes at home let's give it a taste make sure with this slice you get plenty of the butter plenty of the syrup don't be shy make sure you get it on there like we put a lot on the plate so you'll eat it ready everything about that bite smile I'm going to turn this around because I want you to see the light fluffiness going on inside here right look how many bubbles I have in my pancakes follow the bubbles the bubbles are there that's a pancake pancakes from scratch are not only better than the Box you already have all the ingredients in your house and they are well worth the effort they're that much better oh my God [Applause] party Foul

Channel: Epicurious

Views: 3,601,860

Keywords: best pancake recipe, easy pancake recipe, epi, epi 101, epicurious, epicurious 101, fluffy pancake recipe, frank proto, how to cook pancakes, how to cook perfect pancakes, how to make easy pancakes, how to make pancakes, how to make pancakes at home, how to make pancakes from scratch, how to make perfect pancakes, how to make the best pancakes, how to make the best pancakes at home, pancake recipe, perfect pancake recipe, perfect pancakes

Id: vkcHmpKxFwg

Length: 8min 27sec (507 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 20 2022