,---. ,---. ,-. ,--, ,-. .--. .-. .-. | .-.\ | .-' | | .' .' |(| / /\ \ | \| | | |-' \ | `-. | | | | __ (_)/ /__\ \| | | | |--. \| .-' | | \ \ ( _)| || __ || |\ | | |`-' /| `--.| `--. \ `-) )| || | |)|| | |)| /( `--' /( __.'|( __.')\____/ `-'|_| (_)/( (_) (__) (__) (_) (__) (__) ,---. .--. .-. .-. ,--, .--. ,-. .-.,---. .---. | .-.\ / /\ \ | \| |.' .') / /\ \ | |/ / | .-' ( .-._) | |-' )/ /__\ \| | || |(_) / /__\ \| | / | `-. (_) \ | |--' | __ || |\ |\ \ | __ || | \ | .-' _ \ \ | | | | |)|| | |)| \ `-. | | |)|| |) \ | `--.( `-' ) /( |_| (_)/( (_) \____\|_| (_)|((_)-'/( __.' `----' (__) (__) (_) (__) I moved from Belgium to the USA a long time ago, and there's a few foods I really miss. There's the obvious things, like decent bread (What the HECK is up with bread and pastries in general in the USA?), doner kebab, and decent french fries. But another less obvious thing is pancakes. You see, the understanding of what a pancake is and should be is very different in Belgium and the United States. In the US, pancakes are thicker and smaller in diameter. Ours are a lot more thin and typically the size of a full size plate. Kind of like french crepes, but not quite, still a little thicker than those, and we do use eggs. So it's sort of in between I guess. I do not like the way they are made in America. They kind of taste like eating a sponge. But, I guess the sponge-y nature exists for a reason, which is to soak up all the syrup Americans like to drown them in. Which is another thing we don't use traditionally. A traditional Belgian pancake is served with brown sugar and rolled up into a cigar-like shape. Yes, restaurants now serve all kinds of fancy crap, like pancakes with strawberries, whipped cream, even Nutella and all sorts of crazy stuff. But that is not the way our traditional pancakes are done, and I still like the traditional pancakes the best personally. Anyway, here's how you make them: Ingredients Belgian pancakes are actually really simple. And the art is, imho, in keeping it simple. There's only 3 main ingredients: Milk, Eggs, flour - you can optionally add some vanilla-sugar (which for some reason is unobtainium in the USA, so alternatively you can add vanilla extract and some regular white sugar, but be very careful to not add too much sugar. - more on that below) Mixing the dough The most important thing is the flour and eggs. Those are really the only ingredients that need to be measured out somewhat. So start with them. The ratio is roughly 100g flour for every egg. So 300g flour, is 3 eggs - You don't want too much flour, or they will fall apart. You also don't want too much egg, or they will taste egg-y (which is gross). The milk you can sort of eye-ball, as you're mixing, just add more until you get the consistency you want. More milk means you'll get thinner pancakes. That's what we want. As such, the consistency of the dough should be a lot more liquid than what you'd normally have for American pancakes. After that you can mix in the extra, but optional stuff, like the vanilla(-sugar) and/or sugar. Adding in some sugar gives it a bit of extra flavour but it also gives the pancakes some more (brown) texture, as the sugar will caramelize. If you add too much, your pancakes will burn very easily. So only add a tiny bit, if you do at all! You can also mix in some drops of vanilla- extract if you can't find any vanilla-sugar packets. You can mix with a whisk. Personally I usually just use the whisk attachment on an electric hand-mixer. Make sure you whisk it good until all the clumps of flour are gone. Frying pan and temperature Pick a frying pan that is exactly the size of the pancakes you want. Like I said, our pancakes are typically bigger, so a normal-sized frying pan should be about right and give you pancakes that are the size of a regular plate. A lot of people find that the first pancake of a batch usually fails. That's because people often don't start with a hot enough pan. You'll want to pre-heat your frying pan for a while, before you even put butter in it. The correct temperature is about hot enough to just not burn your butter. You don't want it to actually burn your butter, but it should be hot enough that it's close to that point. Pouring the dough This step is kind of important. When you're ready to pour the dough, put some butter in the pan. Don't put the butter in the pan way ahead of time, because your butter will burn, and that's obviously bad. Do stir the butter around the pan a bit, such that it covers the edges nicely, this will ensure everything is lubricated enough for flipping the pancake. You definitively don't want it to stick to the pan when flipping, because that will ruin it pretty quick. Then pour the dough either straight from the mixing bowl or with a latle, into the center of the frying pan. A lot of people will rotate the pan to try and get the dough to distribute thinly. - Don't do that. - It will ruin the texture. Instead, make sure to pour enough dough, such that the dough is about one inch to half an inch from the edges of the pan, and then it should spread out to fill the remainder on it's own. If it doesn't then that's a sign that your dough isn't liquid enough, so you should mix in some more milk into it (you can still do that at this stage). It's important to get the initial pour right and as good as possible for a nice thin but round pancake, because we really don't want to manipulate the dough after pouring. Avoid shaking the pan or touching the cooking pancake at all, because you'll be messing with the air contents and/or texture if you do so. Just don't touch it again until it's ready to flip. Flipping and finish cooking So when is it ready to flip? Well, as the pancake cooks, it will start forming little bubbles, and dry out on top. Once the top looks mostly dry with bubbles, that's when you can flip it. A lot of people like to flip it by flicking the pan. I don't really use this method for 2 reasons: 1) I've seen it go wrong too many times ;) There's a lot of people with stories of pancakes on the floor, or even ceiling. 2) the pancake falling back into the pan displaces a lot of the dough on the bottom and may knock out some of the air we want to keep in the pancake. - Instead, I first gently shake the pan a bit, and make sure the pancake is moving (if it isn't, you probably didn't use enough butter) - then gently slide a spatula underneath it, and flick the pan and the spatula at the same time. It's kind of like flicking it, but in a more controlled, guided way, with speedbrakes. :) Give it a few more minutes on the other side. The second side is usually done quicker. Slide it onto a plate. Now move on to the next pancake. :) Serving For every pancake: - pour some brown sugar on it, and spread it over the whole pancake using a utensil. - Roll it up until it looks like a cigar. Conclusion One thing I find really interesting about pancakes, is that so many countries have their own traditional regional variants. They are all slightly different. Back when I still lived in Belgium, a few houses down lived a friend and his family, they were from Cameroon, and their version of crepes included lemon zest, which is weird initially but really grew on me -haha. They'd make huge stacks of them quite frequently. I know it's kind of unusual for me to phlog a food recipe, but I got weirdly nostalgic for our traditional pancakes lately, as an ex of my mom who used to make stacks of pancakes for me back in the day has recently passed away of asbestos related lung cancer, and since my wife was hungry for some, I made us some this "morning" (more like afternoon because we woke up at 2pm heeeeee)