How to Make the Fluffiest Pancakes - Kitchen Conundrums with Thomas Joseph

Hey everybody .

Thomas Joseph here again with another kitchen conundrum that I know you've been asking about how to avoid the flat chewy pancakes and get the fluffiest pancakes you possibly can .

Well , I'm going to show you a few tricks and tips along the way in making a pancake batter that will yield the fluffiest pancakes yet .

So I have one in three quarters cups of all purpose flour .

And to that , I'm going to add the leavening agent and this is baking powder and a good way to test baking powder .

To see if it is currently active is to drop it into a bowl of warm water and see if it fizzes up if it does , which it is right now .

It's perfect and ready for you to bake with .

So one tablespoon of baking powder just put that right in with the flour here and half a teaspoon of coarse kosher salt and 3.5 tablespoons of granulated sugar for a little bit of sweetness .

And I'm going to sift this together the dry ingredients until it's nice and evenly incorporated .

So now for the wet ingredients or the liquid ingredients , I have 1.5 cups of buttermilk and make sure that your butter milk your eggs , all of your ingredients when you're making pancakes should be at room temperature .

Otherwise , if you start with cold ingredients , you're going to end up with a soggy pancake .

So I'm gonna add two eggs to this right to the buttermilk .

Here .

I'm going to add a teaspoon of vanilla and this adds really great flavor .

A tablespoon of melted butter that's been melted and cooled and two tablespoons of salo oil .

You want to mix all of the wet ingredients together and mix all of the dry ingredients .

You want to do this separately so that you don't overwork the batter .

So this is nicely incorporated here .

Pour this right into the center of my flour mixture and I'm not going to stir until it's all in .

And then all I'm going to do is give it a few gentle stirs because you don't want to overwork the pancake batter .

What that means actually is that you're developing the gluten in the flour and that will give you a gummy flat pancake .

So you don't want to do that .

And so now we're ready for the griddle .

So I have a griddle heating over medium heat and that's about 325 to 350 degrees .

I'm going to take a little bit of butter and I'm gonna drop it right on the griddle .

And with that , I'm gonna add a little bit of safflower oil .

This brings the temperature of the butter up a little bit so that it doesn't burn too quickly on you .

You want , you can use a paper towel here because you really don't need that much fat .

Especially on a non stick griddle like this , the more fat you have on the griddle , the more design and uneven browning you're going to get on the top of your pancake .

Now , I like to use a scoop , an ice cream scoop for this process because it makes perfectly even pancakes , it perfectly portions them out .

So I'm going to just put one spoonful right in the center of my griddle .

And I'm going to actually show you another trick in making the fluffiest pancakes .

And that is adding a secret ingredient .

You can add in some whipped egg whites if you gently fold them in , they add such a great fluffy texture to the pancakes .

So I have three egg whites here , gently fold them into the pancake batter and I'm going to portion out the batter .

Now , this is about a third of a cup of batter per pancake here .

You don't want to make pancakes too big because what happens is the exterior browns too quickly and the interior doesn't cook through .

So use a smaller amount of batter on your griddle and you will have very successful pancakes .

All right .

So my pancake here , the first one I put on .

You can see that it's starting to get dry around the edges and there are bubbles appearing in the center of the pancake .

And that is telling you that it's ready to be flipped .

So it's probably about a minute and a half to two minutes on this side .

And I'm going to gently flip it over and avoid pushing down on the pancake because what that does is it pushes out those pockets of air that you've created .

So don't press down on top like that .

So you can see that the edges are dry around here , the bubbles are popping open in the center and they're staying open and that's when you know you're ready to flip .

So this was the first one I put on .

Here's the second and here's the third .

So it's been about two minutes on this side .

The pancakes are fluffy .

You can see the egg white pancakes almost have a dome to the top of them .

You really know that they're super , super duper fluffy .

I'm gonna just pile them onto a plate .

Now , the great thing about pancakes is you can actually make these a little bit ahead time if you have a platter in a preheated oven around 175 degrees to 200 degrees , you can make these in advance for a wonderful brunch .

So there you have it a few tricks and tips to help you get the fluffiest pancakes ever .

Kitchen conundrum , salt