I'm Frank Proto.
I'm a professional chef and culinary instructor
and today I'm gonna show you the best way
to make pancakes at home.
[pancakes hitting plate]
Frank style.
I'll be going over the 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.
[relaxing music]
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 gonna 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 gonna give us a little fat
and a little bit of leavening to our pancakes.
I'm gonna take my whisk
and 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 mixed it maybe 20, 25 times.
We leave it alone.
Lumps are gonna be okay here.
Leave it alone.
This is the last time we are mixing this.
Do not mix it anymore.
I like for my batter to be on the thicker side
so that we get nice big bubbles.
And my pancakes are nice and tall.
[relaxing music]
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.
The 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.
[crowd clapping]
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 wanna talk about the fat that I use to cook my pancakes.
I'll probably get a lot of hate for this,
but I'm gonna 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 gonna have
a little brown butter flavor and that is delicious.
Make sure you have everything you need close by
because this'll 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 gonna do is I'm gonna scoop my batter.
Try not 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 very 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 'em out a little.
If you want 'em 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 gonna get scraped
and it's not gonna be non-stick 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 to 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's gonna 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 of 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 'em around a little just
to soak up some of that butter up.
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.
[relaxing music]
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
cuz 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 gonna 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 that you'll eat it.
Ready?
Mmm.
Everything about that bite just makes you want to smile.
I'm gonna turn this around cuz 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.
Mmm.
[Staff] Oh God.
[Frank laughing]
Party foul.
