The Recipe with Kenji and Deb - Pancakes

Episode Date: March 25, 2024

In preparation for this episode, Deb and Kenji fed their children so many pancakes that they are now on a pancake strike. But before you start feeling sorry for these young people, don’t forget they got to taste the rainbow of pancake styles. Tall and fluffy. Crisp and fluffy. Thin and crispy. The hottest pancake in the world right now, the Japanese soufflé. Tough life, kids! We learn why baking soda, baking powder, and buttermilk feature prominently, and the technique for “the absolute fluffiest pancake”. Recipes Mentioned: Smitten Kitchen pancakes Serious Eats pancakes Chez Ma Tante pancakes on NYT Cooking

I'm excited to tell you that one of our favorite Radiotopia siblings, Ear Hustle, is back with a new season. Ear Hustle is a show about life inside prison, but it's not your typical prison podcast. Co-hosts Nigel Poore and Erlon Woods have recently been spending time at four California prisons and have a season's worth of funny, surprising, and unforgettable stories to share. In a recent episode, they were able to visit a groundbreaking prison hospice, where they spoke to men who are grappling with the reality of dying inside prison. Also coming up this season are stories about the objects people keep inside their prison cells, complicated mom-daughter relationships in prison, and incarcerated people who wonder whether they've become too comfortable behind bars.

and incarcerated people who wonder whether they've become too comfortable behind bars. Stories about life on the inside, told by those who live it. Find Ear Hustle wherever you get your podcasts. Maple Bliss Rounds. Syrup Satisfiers. Buttermilk Bliss Bites. Pancake Puff Parades. Sizzle Cakes.

Morning Morsels. Batter Euphoria Circles. Golden Sunrise Flaps. Kenji, where are you getting these names for pancakes? I have looked at millions of pancake recipes and I have never heard a pancake called a Golden

Sunrise Flap. I asked an AI generator to come up with clever new pancake names. You had to put clever in there, didn't you? Doesn't get any more clever than sweet stack spectacle. Batter euphorias circles is going to be one of them. I like griddle grandeur gems.

There's a lot of alliteration going on in here. Batter ballet bites. I feel like sizzle cakes could definitely stick. Sizzle cakes, yes. These are definitely something I would name a recipe. Whatever you call them, please don't bring my kids into it because I don't know about you, Kenji, but my kids are on a pancake strike after a number of recipes I've tested in the last week. Are your kids also on a pancake strike?

So my son, my two-year-old, sometimes in the morning he wakes up. I go to his room and wake him up and the first thing he does is goes, downstairs, pancakes. That's what he does because he loves pancakes. And he has been refusing to eat pancakes for the last couple of days. How many, how many pancakes did it take before he refused pancakes? There was multiple types of pancakes each morning for about, I'd say after like the fifth day he was, he was, he was through.

My daughter was through with pancakes after the third day. She's like, we need to, we need to switch it up. Dad, we need protein. We need vegetables. She's a good sport. This morning she tried the final recipe I made. She ate a corner of it and she was like, Papa, this one is really good. Can I please have a bagel? So this is the real life behind the scenes when you're recipe testing in our kitchens. This is the side that people don't see where our kids are like, absolutely not. Get that food away from me. I think this is how people think most recipe testers are at home. But I tend to test something

once and then come back to it later because I don't want to eat the same thing two days in a row. But for the purpose of this show, I did push through on a few recipes. These days, I certainly space my testing out more than I used to, mainly because there's three other people in the house that I have to inflict that testing upon regularly. You say three people, and I'm like, there's three other opinions in the house. That's true. It always is good to always have more opinions on your food, right? At least more opinions on your recipes. I'll take one of my kids' opinions, not the other.

At least more opinions on your recipes. I'll take one of my kids' opinions, not the other. But no, it is really fun to like put something out that you've worked really hard on and get like their completely raw honesty. Because one thing about children is they do not mince words. No. Whether they like something or not. From PRX's Radiotopia, welcome to The Recipe with Kenji and Deb. Where we help you discover your own perfect recipes.

Kenji is the author of Food Lab and The Walk and a columnist for the New York Times. And Deb is the creator of Smitten Kitchen. She's also the author of three really good, best-selling cookbooks. We're both professional home cooks, which means we can and will make the same dish 57 times in our quest for the perfect recipe. And on this show, we want to pull back the curtain on the recipe development process to show you a little bit about what goes into developing a perfect recipe so that you can figure out what works best for you. This week we're talking about flat cakes, griddle cakes, hot cakes, flat jacks, Johnny cakes. Fluffy delight discs. That's coming up in the recipe.

Stay with us. So, Deb, on Smitten Kitchen, you have, I don't know, what must be 30 pancake recipes. You've got like banana oat pancakes. You've got corn fritters. You've got a cherry almond Dutch baby. You've got zucchini fritters. You've got Edna Mae sour cream pancakes. You've got corn fritters. You've got a cherry almond Dutch baby. You've got zucchini fritters. You've got Edna Mae sour cream pancakes. You've got a ton of different types of pancakes. You told me when we started planning this episode that I needed to make your tall, fluffy buttermilk pancake recipe. Can you tell me why you picked that recipe?

You didn't make all 35 recipes. It was just basically basically I do tend to get on like little kicks with things and it was about a month a few years ago where I just, over a series of weekends when the kids were waking me up too early anyway, I just decided to try every recipe I could get my hand on for like the so-called best

buttermilk pancake. You know, the lofty pancakes and the best-evers. And I felt like I had tried dozens over a few weekends. You refer to them as the lofties, the fluffies, and the best-evers. And I was using cornstarch. There was vinegar. There was tons of butter. I wonder which one that one was.

I was using separated egg whites. There were some that have rested batter. You know, there were some that have rested batter. You know, there were some. Listen, none went to waste. But I actually found at the very end that I didn't really have a clear favorite. And none of them were the one I was looking for. And so how did you end up with this one?

I ended up turning to a classic. I ended up pulling down nothing other than the 1896 Fanny Farmer cookbook. And she's got a recipe for buttermilk griddle cakes, which was actually this funny thing. So I was trying to teach my son at the time how to use an index. And I wanted him to find the pancake recipe that I knew was in there. And he's like, there's no pancakes in there. And I'm like, what are you talking about? They're definitely in there. But it turns out they're called griddle cakes.

And I found in there a very simple formula for a pancake. And it was really perfect. I felt like it was classic. It was tall. It was fluffy. It was no nonsense. And I could adapt it so it could be made in one bowl and half asleep, which is pretty much how I usually make pancakes. And I stuck with it.

This does take us to an interesting question that comes up a lot, you know, which is at what point is the recipe yours as opposed to as opposed to the Fannie Farmer recipe? That's a really good question. I usually tend to change, like, you know, kind of tweak a little bit of everything. Let's go through your recipe. So your recipe, it's very simple. So it's got... So simple. It's got a couple of tablespoons of butter, a couple tablespoons of sugar, an egg.

And so basically you melt the butter and then you whisk in the sugar and then you whisk in the egg, you whisk in the vanilla. You add some buttermilk, some sea salt and some baking soda. A very small amount of baking soda, a half teaspoon of baking soda, no baking powder. So the only real leavening that's coming in here is that interaction between the baking soda and the acid in the buttermilk, as well as the egg. And what I found interesting about your recipe is that it uses a full cup of flour to a half cup of buttermilk. Half cup plus two tablespoons, sorry, of buttermilk.

So it's a very sort of dry batter. In fact, I would say it's not even a batter, right? It's almost, it's more like a, it's more like a dough. Almost, yeah. I actually scoop it in a cup, cookie scoop. And it's true, when I look at most pancake recipes, there's more liquid per cup than flour. And I actually have a range of buttermilk here

just because whenever I buy buttermilk, every brand has a different consistency. I mean, first acknowledging that what we call, like what we buy as packaged buttermilk is not actually what buttermilk is. Buttermilk is a byproduct of cheese making. It's very thin. It has a little acidity to it. That's not what this is. But the commercial stuff we buy, which tastes more like a thinned out yogurt or sour cream, some of them are kind of thin for brands and some are thick. And I, you know, so the amount that you need might range. Because buttermilk is a living thing. You know, there's billions of lactobacillus in there, there's bacteria in there that are doing stuff. The thickness of buttermilk can actually change

even after you buy it, you know, because the thickness comes from proteins coagulating from the acidity that's produced by those bacteria as they eat the milk sugar. So over time, buttermilk and just like regular milk will get a little more acidic as it sits because the bacteria are still digesting stuff. And so the more acidic it gets, the thicker it gets. And so your buttermilk a week after you buy it could actually be a little bit thicker than it was the day you bought it. So that affects your pancake. And there's your tell, because I actually do not believe that buttermilk expires. Oh, that's fine.

Yeah, yeah. I keep mine in the fridge for a long time. Very long. I mean, there's a certain point where you know it's off, but that takes a lot longer than the label will suggest. But yeah, they definitely get thicker over time. In your recipe, some of the changes you made, I think the biggest change you made

was that instead of a combination of buttermilk and baking soda, which is what you did, the original recipe has regular milk and baking powder. I mean, the idea being that baking powder already contains a powdered acid, so you don't need the buttermilk in there. Like in the original recipe, the baking powder does all the leavening on its own. The milk is just there for richness and moisture. Whereas in your recipe, you get rid of the baking soda, you swap it out for baking soda and buttermilk. Can you tell me about that decision and why you went with buttermilk instead of regular milk? First of all, I'm actually not entirely sure. And I would have to pull out the cookbook, which I probably should have, to see because commercial baking powder was not a thing in 1896, right? That came along later.

So I assume that it probably was originally baking soda. That was the leavener until a certain point in the 1900s. And it was adapted? Yeah. So I assume that maybe these newer versions we see with the two teaspoons of baking powder instead of half a teaspoon. It could be or it might have been. I wish I still had all my originals. It might have been in my tinkering because I do find that baking soda adds a browning element that I really liked in the pancake. Baking powder was invented in the

mid 19th century. So it was definitely around when Fanny Farmer was there. So it was around. So now I have to ask, maybe it was just in my tinkering that I was trying different leavening amounts and different leavening levels and that I found that I really liked what was going on with the buttermilk. Because I actually, you know, usually the buttermilk flavor is neutralized, but I like that it sticks around just a little bit in the recipe without it being like aggressive. I like the flavor of buttermilk, which is funny because my husband, like if you mentioned buttermilk, he's like, like, why? Why does this exist? Oh, I like to drink buttermilk like in a glass, you know, I love buttermilk.

That's so funny. I once was talking about it on the site and so many readers came forward and said that they drank it or their grandmothers drank it like over a glass of milk. Wow, was my reaction. That's great.

I love that everyone does things differently. So your recipe, you know, we're talking about the thickness of the batter and the ratio. Excuse me. Is that one of my pancakes? This is one of your pancakes. You know, what I found interesting about these is when you eat them, the interior texture, it's like, it's like almost between what I would think of as a pancake and what I would think of as a biscuit, you know? They're definitely like much taller and sort of fluffier than I would think of as a pancake, but they have a different type of dryness to them than a pancake does. You know, like if McDonald's made their McGriddles with

these, maybe they are kind of like McDonald's McGriddles adjacent, somewhere between a pancake and a biscuit. I think delicious. I love the thickness of them. I will say that, you know, when you first cook them, there's this great moment where they're nice and browned on both sides and they're just set in the center. And if I keep them warming in the oven for a while, they definitely can get a little bit more of a dry thing. But I really like it when they get that sort of brown seal on the edges and then the tenderness inside. And yeah, it is a little bit like, almost like a scone, slightly, but not nearly as dry and dense. A scone that you don't need to like slather in cream for it to be moist. Absolutely. And for me, I love that, like I like the salt level. I like there to be a little saltiness there. And I like that there's,

you can taste the butter. I like a little bit of vanilla in there. I noticed a lot of traditional recipes don't have vanilla in them, but I really do like vanilla in a buttermilk pancake. I don't need it in everything. I almost add vanilla to my pancakes, whether the recipe calls for it or not. Well, that's good to hear because I definitely did that when I made your pancakes too. Did mine not have vanilla in it? No, I didn't have it. And I was like, this needs vanilla. Now, I usually keep the sugar level way down in pancakes because we are a maple syrup family or Nutella family.

And so we're going to slather it in something sweet. So I don't really need it to be that sugary. But these are pretty middle. Like they definitely have some sweetness to it where you could eat them alone. You came from what you refer to as an ingredient household, which means that you had raw ingredients. What was your pancake situation growing up? So we always had pancakes from scratch growing up. We never had Bisquick. My mother was very

anti-box mixes. But when I was in college, when I was an undergrad, sometimes after a late night, we would go to the IHOP in Arlington that was open 24 hours. And I would never order the pancakes there because I didn't like them. I had good IHOP and I wouldn't order pancakes. And I thought they tasted like they were from a mix. And my friends used to call me a pancake snob. And I am telling you. They definitely were. That my mother has never been so proud of me being insulted.

You could have just like that. Like if she could put it on a medal on her mantle, the fact that people thought I was a pancake snob because I didn't like the IHOP pancakes. I don't think she's ever been more proud of a moment, like felt better about her parenting. So maybe that tells you a lot about my upbringing. We were a Bisquick family all the way.

And my mom would make what she called pancake cakes, which is basically like the little kid thing where you make too much batter. So instead of making a bunch of small pancakes, you just pour too much batter in the pan and just wait for it to set. Oh, wow. Like a whole skillet size? Not quite that thick. Not quite like that.

But she would make pancakes that were probably like, I don't know, they would puff up to like three quarters to an inch thick and she would call them pancake cakes which is actually similar now to those you know those japanese souffle pancakes although it was made with bisquick so much heavier but these days i'm anti bisquick but only because i live in seattle and crusties is like the is the local seattle brand of pre-mixed pancake batter so we go i go to costco and buy like the the giant bag you giant five pound bags of Krusty's because my son wants pancakes like multiple times a week and I'm not making them from scratch multiple times a week.

We make special pancakes on weekends and waffles on weekends, but like my weekday pancakes are from a mix. Pancakes were definitely a weekend thing growing up. Maybe if they were a weekday thing, there would have been more like Bisquick acceptance, but it was definitely a Saturday, Sunday morning thing. Like we would have something sweet and more decadent for breakfast. Or like one day we would have bagels and one day we would have pancakes. But what I love when I was working on my recipe is that you can actually mix the whole thing with a fork. I don't know why I get very stuck on this idea of

fork mixing. Like you don't need to have a fancy kitchen implement known as a whisk or an electric mixer. Like you can really make this one bowl half asleep. I actually use a cookie scoop usually to drop it in the pan because I like that height and because I keep them on the thicker side. Although you can thin them with that additional buttermilk if you want to get more of like a flatter spilling out pancake shape. Right. more of like a flatter spilling out pancake shape.

Kenji, so you made my tall, fluffy buttermilk pancakes. And I, last weekend, made your light and fluffy pancake recipe, which I believe is in the Food Lab book and also on SeriousEats.com. And it was delicious. I have so many questions for you. All right, let's get into it. So in your recipe, which, and I'm pulling from the one on Serious Eats, your light and fluffy pancakes, you're testing a bunch of variables here. You're looking at buttermilk and what you can swap for a baking soda and baking powder. You did the whole science thing, Kenji, and we

are grateful for it. Yeah. I mean, this is what I call one of my sort of quote unquote best recipes, which when I use the term best in a recipe, what I mean is like, not that this recipe is going to give you like the universal best food, but that if you read the accompanying article, like I'm testing the flour, I'm testing the eggs, I'm testing the butter. I'm showing you like what baking powder does, what baking soda does, et cetera, so that you can see when you modify these things, what's going to happen to your pancake so that you can make it into your own best recipe you know when i say

that i haven't made my recipe since writing it in the book what i what i really mean is that i haven't made it exactly the way it's written because for me that recipe and others like it where i'm sort of testing all the variables is really just a way of sort of documenting the techniques and the science behind it so that when i do go into the kitchen the next time, I don't need to pull out that recipe. And I have, you know, it's like I've got the basic ratio down and I know what happens when you whip egg whites versus not whip egg whites. Or I know that if I want it extra brown today, I should add some more baking soda, for instance. Do you follow your recipes exactly once you're done with them? I'm pretty recipe loyal, actually, but it depends. I will do what you're saying,

which is to say tinker based on either ingredients I have around or what I'm trying to do. But most of the time when I get a recipe exactly the way I wanted it, I just follow it to the letter. And when I'm making it, it's a day I don't have to think about it. I can be half asleep and not be in recipe development mode. So we enjoyed your pancakes. They were really tender and moist. I do have a picture of me with a hand mixer out and a few bowls. So I had some questions. But you talk about this in your article too,

like why do you recommend baking powder and baking soda? Because we talked about how I just use baking soda, which is probably more unusual than using both. But why do you recommend using a little bit of both? Well, so there's a couple of reasons. So my recipe is actually sort of two recipes in one, right? So my recipe, I have you make a basic dry pancake mix, which is sort of like the equivalent of a box of Bisquick, right? It's a combination of flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and sugar. I did want to provide sort of a basic mix that you can use in a few different applications. So not, you know, in the same way that you would use something like a Bisquick or a Crusty's or whatever, you know, so you could turn it into waffles if you want, you could turn

it into biscuits if you want. So for that reason, I did want to put both baking powder and baking soda because there are situations where both are needed but so baking powder contains baking soda right so baking soda is sodium bicarbonate baking powder is a combination of sodium bicarbonate which is a powdered alkaline along with a bunch of starch to keep it dry as well as a couple of different powdered acids right so there's double acting baking powder which is what you find in the shops these days there's an acid in there the powdered acid in there that reacts immediately upon dissolving so that the, you know, the sodium bicarbonate and the acid react and they form these bubbles, right? And then there's a second acid in there that only reacts once it reaches a certain temperature. So it's during cooking that it'll bubble again, and that's the double acting part. And so baking powder is kind of formulated to have

the right level of acid and base to fully react in a batter, right? So if you change that ratio, it also, so for instance, in my recipe, I'm adding some buttermilk, right? Then now you have a sort of this excess of acid. And so you actually have a little more power in there. If you want to add a little baking soda in there, then you can get a little bit more leavening action out of that. The other thing that happens with baking soda, though, is that the pH of your batter can affect the way it browns, right? So like if we're talking about the Maillard browning reaction, which is the reaction that takes the chemical reaction that takes place

when you brown pancakes or when you sear a steak or when you make toast or whatever, anything you're browning in the kitchen with heat basically is the Maillard reaction. And so that reaction takes place faster in more alkaline environments. So when you add more baking soda to your pancake batter, you make it more alkaline. And consequently, you also make it bake up a little bit darker. So if you make the exact same pancake mix and you add an extra quarter teaspoon of baking soda to half of it and then bake it side by side, you'll find one of those pancakes comes out. The one with more baking soda to half of it and then bake it side by side, you'll find one of those pancakes comes out. The one with more baking soda comes out significantly darker. And that can be a good

or bad thing. It depends how pale or dark you want your pancakes. But if you really like those dark pancakes, then you should add a little bit more baking soda. And if you really like them nice and pale, a little bit less. So your recipe, you use a combination of sour cream and buttermilk. I love sour cream so much. And I think sour cream should be in more. Why? I love sour cream so much and I think sour cream should be in more recipes. So I was not upset at all, but I was curious how you got there. Is it just because buttermilk could be so thin? Yeah, it's partly because the buttermilk can be so thin. It's also because sour milk, you know, like, like tablespoon measure for measure, sour, sour cream tastes more sour than buttermilk does. You know, it's just getting that little bit of extra tang

in there. If you want to go full buttermilk, you can do that and it'll, it'll work just fine. Or if you want to do, you know, cut out the buttermilk and the sour cream and just use say a yogurt, you know, which, which has a sort of similar texture to a mixture of buttermilk and sour cream. Like that, where that works also. Any kind of soured dairy product is going to work. It'll just slightly change the, the end results. Such as perhaps kefir, which is actually a lovely product to use if you don't have buttermilk. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I love kefir. That one I might drink a glass of. I have a personal question. Why are you making me separate eggs before breakfast, Kenji?

I don't know. This is also one of the reasons why I don't make these pancakes other than like by request on weekends. Are you saying that was the old Kenji and current Kenji would never separate eggs before breakfast? No, but seriously, I did do it and it makes for a fluffier pancake. I get that. I just have to harass you over it. Right. So yeah, I mean, the reason is, yeah, it makes a fluffier pancake. So if you want the absolute fluffiest pancakes, if you want a pancake that's like 5% fluffier than your normal pancake yeah if you separate out the egg whites you beat them until they form a nice stiff meringue so that they've got a lot of air in there and then you very gently fold them back into the rest of the batter so that at least some of that air sort of stays in there

when you add that when you add the egg whites back in it'll make your pancakes fluffier because the fluffiness of a pancake comes basically because the air bubbles inside and the water vapor inside puffs up, right? And it's what creates those sort of spaces that make it fluffy. So the more air you can incorporate into the batter and the more sort of chemical reactions that create either water vapor or types of air, you know, carbon dioxide, things like that from the baking soda, the more of that you can add in there, the fluffier your pancake is going to be. So the baking powder does the leavening, the puffing, the bulk of the puffing job. Yeah. Whereas, whereas the egg whites, it's like, all right, we've got this other ingredient here. You could put it in as is egg whites on their own are going to cause some puffing because

they've got water in them and that water is going to turn into vapor and expand. But you can get even more puffing if you then whip those egg whites and get some air as well as all of their moisture in there, you know. But it is, again, one of those things that adds a lot of extra work just to give you a pancake that's, you know, five to 10% fluffier. You got to really ask yourself, like, is it worth it or not? And I'd say in most weekday mornings, it's not worth it. So one thing you mentioned is that lumps are okay in your pancake batter. And I see this in a lot of pancake recipes. And I was curious what the food science behind this is. Like there's this idea that you don't need to get all the lumps out of the batter. What is it? Yeah. So, you know, Deb, this is fascinating to me because when I started buying pancake mix

from the, from Costco, when I started buying this crusties, it specifically tells you to mix the batter until it's completely smooth. And I think it's because most home cooks who make things, you know, if you follow a recipe, it tells you to leave it lumpy, whereas these batter, the bagged stuff tells you to make it smooth. I think the reason is because in the bags they combine, I looked at the ingredients there, you know, so there's mono and diglycerides, and then there's also starch in there, cornstarch in there. And these are all things that are going to help make it a little more stable and help the fats in there emulsify better. It's going to help prevent gluten from forming. And that's really the main thing is that over mixing a pancake batter can cause too much gluten formation. So gluten is, it's the, you know,

the matrix of proteins, of tangled up proteins that forms when you combine flour and water. If you imagine like a big box, right? And you have a bunch of little balls of yarn in there, and then you stick a giant spoon in there and you're sticking there and you're stirring it up. Those balls of yarn get tangled up, right? And eventually you end up with sort of one big mess of yarn. And that's essentially what's happening when you're mixing a dough or a batter is that you're slightly unraveling some of the proteins in there. You're getting them to combine with the water and then stick together and form like a big tangled ball, right? them to combine with the water and then stick together and form like a big tangled ball right and so the more you mix it the more tangled that ball becomes and the more dense and chewy and

leaden your pancakes become so that that's why you know generally the indication for a pancake that the batter is mixed enough is that there are still some very very small pockets of like dry flour there's still plenty of lumps and maybe there's the occasional little streak or tiny pocket of dry flour in there you don't want big pockets that aren't going to cook out, but a couple of dry pockets that will, you know, because once you put the pancake batter into your pan or onto your griddle, there's still some mechanical stirring that's going on. You know, there's bubbles that's forming, the batter's moving around in there. So there's still like a little bit of mixing that's going on. So any kind of little spots of unmoistened flour will

get moistened during the cooking process. But really what you want to avoid doing is overmixing because that turns your pancakes tough. I felt when I made yours the density difference because the batter was a little thin at that point, folding the egg whites, and I actually felt like most of the lumps were just like little egg white pockets, which are, you know, it's fine. That's also fine. I also feel as a cook who's always told not to overmix my batters that I think that the risk of overmixing pancake batter is not as big as recipes will scare you into thinking like I'm

not saying like what I'm talking about like you mix it three or four extra times around the bowl like it's not going to turn into like a leaden stale pancake you know what I mean there we're talking about like leaving the mixer on for five minutes here. It's instant paperweight at that point. One other thing that struck me when I made your pancake recipe, and I thought this was kind of interesting,

is that you use very little oil in the pan, on the griddle. I feel like a lot of pancake recipes will have you really put a good thick puddle in there or at least a couple tablespoons per pan full to get the crisp, but it wasn't necessary with yours. You actually tell us to put it in and then wipe it off. So can you tell us

what was going on there? Yeah. So this is the thing with pancakes, right? That you can cook them in a lot of fat and there are delicious pancakes that are cooked in a lot of fat. And then there are some pancakes, there are delicious pancakes that are cooked in virtually no fat. The difference at the end is if you look at the surface of a pancake, you can always tell how much fat was in the pan when it was cooked. So if you get that sort of mottled browning, you know, like a spotty browning, or if you get those kind of lacy, crispy edges with sort of like these kind of like almost like toffee-like bubbles on them, you know, or like crunchy bits on them, that is a sign that the pancake was cooked with plenty of fat. If you get a more even brown with like a few little spots

here and there, by a lot of fat, I mean like enough fat that the bottom of the pan is fully covered in fat and maybe it's even like a slight, you know, you're kind of shallow frying the pancake. If you have just a little bit of fat in the bottom of a pan and you put your pancake batter in there, what can happen then is that you'll get, you know, some parts where the pancake comes into direct contact with the pan and you're going to get some really dark browning, but there's going to be some spots where there's say a pocket of oil or a pocket pocket of butter or maybe even a pocket of steam from the water content of the of the water that's trapped under that pancake that pushes it off the surface of the pan. And so you get slightly lighter spots there. And that's why that's why you get that kind of uneven browning know, like a pancake commercial where, where it's like perfectly smooth and almost glossy, shiny, like a shiny finish to the surface of it.

You do it with virtually no oil. And, you know, this will work in either a nonstick pan or in a well-seasoned cast iron or carbon steel pan where I put in, you know, I put in butter or oil and then I pretend I'm seasoning the pan. Like I wipe the oil out as if I had made a mistake putting it in there, you know, and then I put, then I put my pancake batter in. And so it's just a thin enough layer that it doesn't stick, but it doesn't affect the browning. So you get a much more even browning. It's almost like the difference between what I think of as like a smash burger versus a pan fried hamburger, you know, or a hamburger that's cooked on a griddle. So like a smash burger, a pan fried hamburger, you know, or a hamburger that's cooked on a griddle. So like a smash burger, you get that almost like sheath of smooth, golden, even crust on it.

I'm getting hungry. Those are my favorite. Whereas when you cook it on a griddle or you cook it in a pan, you get more surface area, you get more crunch, maybe. You don't get a smooth crust, you get a more sort of modeled and a more textured crust. I wanted to add just real quick about, because you were talking about the browning and stuff, and I actually took a couple of pictures of your pancakes when I made them. And I thought it had some of the prettiest lacy pattern I've ever had on a pancake. Like it was like, it was gorgeous. It was like a doily. I've never seen anything like it,

but it sounded like you were looking for more of an even brown, but I thought they came out really gorgeous. So Deb, you made my pancakes and I made your pancakes, but we also both made another popular pancake recipe. And we will talk about that after the break. So Deb, last week when you and I were both making our pancakes, it occurred to me that we have a mutual pancake loving friend whose opinion might be valuable here. Are you thinking of Ed Levine, creator of Serious Eats and the podcaster extraordinaire behind Special Sauce with Ed Levine? That is exactly who I was thinking of in exactly those words, in fact. So we started a conversation with Ed and we were asking him about what he thinks the perfect pancake is.

And I'm telling you, it probably took him about five seconds to come up with the answer. I sent him a message at Monday 2.17 PM and he sent a response Monday 2.17 PM. I love that energy in a friend. So he feels that they should be crisp on the outside and fluffy inside. And he also mentioned that he wanted to know if either of us had ever tried a Japanese style souffle pancake, such as the one they have at a restaurant called High Collar on East 9th Street. And I said, wow, I haven't been there and I haven't tried these pancakes, but it happens to be very close to my apartment. Why don't we go over there and have lunch tomorrow and try them out? And so we did. That sounds like a good plan. This reminds me of my days in New York, you know, when I was working at Serious Eats with Ed,

they were always like that. They were like, oh, it's two o'clock. Let's go eat a sandwich. It's three o'clock. Let's go eat four slices of pizza and try those. It was a series of going to restaurants and ordering everything on the menu, which was fun. I love that impulsivity in him. And I also love that thing that you can do in New York where you're like, why am I living in this ridiculous city with this small apartment? You're like, right, we can just go meet somebody for pancakes at a random restaurant on 9th Street. World-class Japanese pancakes. And we talked about you the whole time, Kanji. So it's interesting because you guys ended up going to the Japanese pancake place,

but the original place you were going to go, what that Ed was mentioning was a restaurant called Chez Matante, which, you know, my aunt's house in Brooklyn. Oh, your aunt lives there? No, that's what it means, Deb. I mean, you guys, I'm even doing Duolingo French. I have no excuse to not get that one right. But you know, what, what got me was that Ed said when he described his perfect pancake, it was very different from what I think of as a perfect pancake because he said, you know, he wants his pancakes to have a thin, crispy exterior, almost like a great fritter. And I don't think I'd ever had a pancake that tastes almost like a great fritter. And so when he mentioned this place, Chez Matante, I went and looked up their recipe. I was

like, oh, this is very different from a normal pancake recipe because you're frying it in like a quarter inch or an eighth of an inch of clarified butter, right? So Chez Matin is a restaurant in Brooklyn. They don't just make breakfast. They make dinner. I've actually been there for dinner probably three times. They're fantastic. They're such a good cook.

But they got very famous, almost like a viral famous for their pancake recipe, which is this one, which is fried in quite a bit of butter. Clarified butter, importantly. Clarified butter. Kenji, what's the difference between regular butter and clarified butter? I don't have to tell you this, Deb. I'm baiting you. You tell me what's the difference. This is like asking a Muppet if they know how to count. Kenji, what's the difference? Deb, what's the difference between regular butter and clarified butter?

I mean, I may not have the most scientifically accurate description, Deb, what's the difference between regular butter and clarified butter? I mean, I may not have the most scientifically accurate description, but basically butter has butter solids, milk solids in it, and there's a little bit of water content. So if you are to, let's say you were to melt butter into a bowl, and then you were to put it in the fridge to chill it again, what you would end up with is a separation of the milk fat, the butter fat, and the water element. And what you actually just want with clarified butter is to just have the butter solids. It's a clearer butter. If you cook something in a pan with butter, the butter browns, which can be delicious in some places, but in other places, it might lead to your pancakes having a burnt appearance when they're not. So butter has a low smoking point, much lower

than clarified butter or an oil. But I actually used, when I made this due to laziness, I actually used ghee. And I do think there's a bit of confusion over the difference between clarified butter and ghee. And on this, I'm not exactly an expert, but I think it's just that they're made in different ways. Ghee has a slightly toastier flavor. Right. So ghee is a form of clarified butter, but it's typically cooked down until the butter solids are a little bit browned before they're skimmed off. Whereas in like a French restaurant, when you get clarified butter or Western restaurant, when you get clarified butter, you're cooking it just until it melts before you skim off those milk solids. So ghee typically has a slight sort of toastier, nuttier flavor to it. It's also almost always made with slightly fermented

cream or butter. So it'll have a bit of that sort of tang to it as well. It's quite delicious. And you can buy it in a jar and it has a long shelf life. You don't even need to put it in the fridge, which is very interesting. And it's of course used a lot in Indian cooking, but I love having a jar around and I definitely used it instead of clarifying my own butter on a Tuesday night in New York City. I decided to clarify two pounds of butter

just to have on hand. Yeah, one does Ken. If you're going to clarify butter, it's actually much easier to clarify a large amount than it is to clarify just a little bit because there's always waste when you clarify butter. So the process of clarifying butter, you heat it up, you can do it in a bowl, in the microwave, you can do it in a pan. I usually just do it in a pan on the stovetop. And then once you heat it up and melt it, you want to separate it. So you can do that by either pouring off the clear golden butterfat that appears on top and leaving behind the water and milk proteins that are at the bottom, or you can ladle it off. But what happens is that no matter what, you're always going to leave behind a little bit of that butterfat, right? And the amount of butterfat you leave behind is basically the same whether you're clarifying a pound or a tablespoon

of butter. So proportionally, you get a lot better yield when you clarify a ton of butter as opposed to just a little bit of butter. It's also that I find, easier to skim off a big collection of milk solids than it is to skim off just the random stragglers. The important part of clarified butter is that you can heat it up to a relatively high temperature, so like, say, 325 degrees is what I was cooking these pancakes at, 350 degrees. The fat is hot there, and it's not browning anymore. It's the same as if you had a deep fryer full of oil, except in this case, you get buttery flavor out of it and then so the chez mouton recipe it's a relatively thin batter that has a very large proportion of baking powder like two and a half tablespoons of baking humongous yeah absolutely humongous so i will say that and it could be cook's error but i i felt like all the

baking powder didn't it's the word like activate, so you had, you know, that kind of tingly taste. I had that in mind. But I know that's not the case at the restaurant. So I must have, I must have done something wrong. Or maybe I over measured. Maybe, or maybe the recipe online is a little different from what they do at the restaurant. But I didn't get that taste. You know, for me, the baking powder, what it does.

So when you pour this, what you do is you scoop up the batter a third of a cup at a time. It's very thin. And then you have this pan full of hot oil, like an eighth inch of hot butterfat. And then you pour from the scoop into the butterfat. And it really is almost like a fritter. Part of it will pool out into the pan, but the edges kind of start to almost float away. And then because there's so much baking powder, it also kind of breaks up the edges a lot. So they become kind of really frizzled and frilly. And I tried this a couple of ways. I cooked some

at lower than 300 degrees, around 290 degrees, 95, and then some higher at around 325 to 350. What I find is that the lower temperature ones, they take a very long time to cook, you know, like maybe eight or nine minutes. But what happens is you end up almost sort of dehydrating the edges and getting this really, it tastes like the edge of a good chocolate chip cookie to me you know like like brown brown key like a caramel flavor a toffee like almost almost like a like a sticky crunchiness to it like a sugary crunchiness to it so you like the low and slow shame i like the low and slow i mean even the even the fast and hot the the high the fat the faster ones which are more like a traditional pancake i really enjoyed these pancakes.

I think it's because, I mean, after I made the third one, that eighth inch of oil that was in the bottom of the skillet was completely gone. So these pancakes are, at least as I make them, they are, you know, like 40% butter. So that probably makes a difference. But did you add more? They do say to add a tablespoon or so between each batch, but you are starting with a quarter cup of oil and a 12 inch pan. I had, yeah, I mean, I had two pounds of clarified butter sitting on my counter, so I was adding liberally as needed. Now, they don't call for 300 or 325 degree

frying. I think this is Kenji being a little extra. They call for medium or medium-high heat. You know, I mean, we can talk about temperature and pan surfaces because- No, I was just giving you a hard time. That being extra. I did it at 325 just for the sake of consistency. I did it on my induction cooktop that keeps a pretty precise temperature. Actually, there's a couple other things in the recipe though I thought were very helpful. For example, the recipe itself is pretty straightforward aside from the whole clarified butter part. It's got one egg yolk, but you're not like, you're separating eggs, but you're not whipping anything. It's actually one bowl mixed right at the same time. It's just milk. It doesn't even have buttermilk

in it. There's no vanilla in it. I don't think I would have minded some vanilla, but that's just my old fashioned taste. I considered adding vanilla to it and then refrained at the very end. But they have you heat your 12 inch cast iron skillet or griddle over medium high heat for at least five minutes. And I feel like this is a very, and this is probably something we'll get into in other episodes, but this idea of properly preheating your pan, especially when you're using a heavy cast iron skillet, makes a huge difference in how sticky things are,

how well it cooks. When you flip the pancake, the cook surface should be very crispy with a dark ring around the edge. They are telling you to cook these dark, like don't move them too soon. In fact, when you do, you don't really get much rise out of it you get a softer pancake and truly the ones that i cooked in the full amount of oil like in the beginning had a real crunchy fried edge to

them oh yeah that the later ones where i got tired of adding clarified the the ghee to it didn't they had the flat the kind like you can scrape a fork on and it makes a noise, right? It made such a noise. And the crisp stayed long after the pancakes were cool. Really neat. I had a little different experience with you making it. I still think I prefer my taller ones. But I also know for sure if I was sitting down at Chimatan and they brought these pancakes

out, I would not want to share them, which is the experience I hear from everybody who's eaten there. I also went out to try these Japanese pancakes this week because I'd never had the souffle style pancake before. And I think they're really interesting. It's definitely a little far from like the bisquick style that we grew up with. But I thought there was something, you know, it's really neat. They're very tall and fluffy. They have a low amount of flour. They definitely have the whip separated eggs. I think they're usually served for dessert. Like ours came with ice cream. So I feel like we were not maybe supposed to be eating it before our sandwich, but we did. But I know they were

having like, there was a big pancake craze in Japan, you know, and I think even by 2016, it was like there were lots of places that were competitively making them. The best souffle pancakes. Mostly, I think the recipe is pretty straightforward, but it's almost like a little closer to a chiffon cake where there's less flour and a lot of fluff. They're often cooked in rings that have been oiled, which helps ensure that they do not spread, but they grow tall. It's very much like a souffle in that sense. Very much like a souffle. And a little water is added to the pan. To help them steam. To give it a little steam. It's kind of trapped in. And so they're very light and soft.

The ones we had at High Collar, and I'm sure they're a little different each day, but they're really good. They reminded me a little bit of a very fluffy birthday cake. And they had a lemony butter spread that was just so good. Highly enjoyed them. It was a fun outing. So if people are interested in these Japanese souffle pancakes and haven't had them or don't have a place nearby where you can get them, I would highly suggest my friend Nami from Just One Cookbook. Oh, I was looking at her recipe. That's where I was doing my research. Her recipes are very trustworthy. And if you want to try these Japanese souffle pancakes, I would look for them on her site. She has a wonderful recipe for them.

I highly recommend almost all of her recipes. Whenever I'm looking for a Japanese recipe, I go to her first, at least because she's done so much research and has such a good level of detail in them. It's exceptional. What are our favorite questions to wrap up with? Does it waffle? Does it taco? Does it waffle does it taco does it leftover can you fry it in butter in a pan i feel like you can definitely waffle pancakes and you can pancake waffles right like the batters are often oh the bad i thought you're talking about just like leftover can you take a leftover pancake and stick okay that would be probably do that too yes especially if it had lost its crisp you could probably put a leftover pancake in a waffle iron and it would be delicious.

Could you turn a pancake into a taco? Absolutely. Do you mean like the pancake is the taco, like it's the tortilla? Or would you make a breakfast taco with pancakes, bacon, syrup? No. I mean like the breakfast taco equivalent of a McDonald's McGriddle where where the pancake is the tortilla and the stuff is inside. You fold up the stuff inside it. You keep talking about this McDonald's McGriddle. And I think we found a piece of research I did not get to this week.

I'll see what I can do about it. Have you never had a McGriddle? Never had a McGriddle. They taste like very, very dense artificial pancakes. I've never had it. I can't believe I'm really missing out. No Bisquick and no McGriddles. What kind of life am I living here?

How are leftover pancakes, Kenji? Do you like leftover pancakes? I like leftover pancakes just because they make an easy snack. Like, you know, we'll have pancakes in the morning. We never finish a full batch of pancakes. So we always have leftovers if we make pancakes. And my kids will eat them when they get home or I'll grab one and bring it in the car. I like leftover pancakes because they are a non-messy snack.

Yes. Especially mine, those thick ones that you can eat as snack food. Yeah. Yours are kind of perfect for it. In fact, they even like fit inside snack containers. I was trying for that. How do you reheat pancakes? What's your favorite way? Or do you not? If I were going to reheat a pancake, I would probably do it in the microwave. Although if I wanted the best results, I would probably sort of re-griddle it, you know, like heat up a pan. And the same way I do a pizza, you know, in a skillet. Oh, it's so good that way. So that you get a little bit of that exterior texture again. Would you add butter to the pan to reheat it? I don't think so. I think I'd keep it a dry pan and then put the butter on top afterwards. What about you?

I would normally just microwave it, but you definitely compromise the texture that way. But I have not tried to reheat it the way you do pizza in a pan, which, of course, is a whole other bag of conversation. I like to steep my pancakes in boiling water the next day to reheat them. Wait, I'm breaking the don't yuck my yum rule. I'm like, oh, no, that sounds different. Kenji, that sounds so different. No, no, it's gross. It's gross.

You've been listening to The Recipe. If you want to find the recipes for everything we've talked about here, including Deb's Fluffy Disc Delights and my Melt-in-Your-Mouth Medallions, as well as the other pancakes we've been talking about, you can find the recipes and links for all that stuff on therecipepodcast.com. Or you can follow us at Kenji and Deb on Instagram. And we now have a phone number where you can call us. It's 202-709-7607. And you can leave us a voicemail.

The recipe is created and co-hosted by Deb Perlman and J. Kenji Lopez-Alt. Our producers are Jocelyn Gonzalez, Harry Gregory, and Pedro Rafael Rosado of PRX Productions. Edwin Ochoa is the project manager. The executive producer for Radiotopia is Audrey Martavich, and Yuri Lissardo is the director of network operations. Thank you for listening. Thanks for listening. The Recipe with Kenji and Deb is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, creator-owned, listener-supported podcasts. Discover audio with vision at radiotopia.fm.