How Pancakes are Made in 11 Countries

[groovy music]

You're about to see...

11 different chefs...

From 11 different countries...

[All] Make pancakes.

[groovy music continues]

Today we're making Japanese souffle pancake,

[speaking in Japanese] in Japanese.

It is a little fluffier and taller.

We are making the classic batter,

but then we will be baking it in the oven

instead of steaming it.

And it will create a little crispier edge.

Flour, some sugar, baking powder, and baking soda.

So we're using two leavening agents.

Next we're gonna combine the wet ingredients.

So we have whole milk, we have an egg.

We're just gonna mix this to combine.

Combine the dry and wet mixture here.

And we don't wanna stir too much.

We don't wanna overwork the batter.

We're gonna take some lemon juice.

The lemon juice helps to activate the baking soda

and you're gonna start to see some bubbling.

So next we're gonna make the meringue.

Take two egg white, make them into stiff peaks

so it's really loud,

but you wanna keep doing this till you form stiff peaks

to make the meringue.

Okay, that was like a construction zone.

I'm gonna add the meringue.

Careful not to deflate this meringue.

So you wanna fold it in pretty gently.

These pancakes get really fluffy when you

chill the batter for a bit.

So we're gonna put this in the fridge for a couple of hours.

I'm heating up a cast iron pan

and you wanna put a healthy amount vegetable oil.

Any neutral oil will be okay.

It really helps to get the edges of the pancakes crispy.

This will make two stacks.

So we're gonna make the first stack now.

This goes straight into the oven at 400 degrees.

Bake that for six minutes and then we will flip it once

and bake it for another five minutes.

So now the pancakes are cooked

and we are going to put the toppings on.

We have a caramel sauce.

I'm gonna add some of these bananas here as well.

And then I like to make this a little over the top

with a scoop of red bean azuki ice cream on top.

[groovy music]

Hmm, really crispy and fluffy.

Delicious.

This pancake originated in Austria is very wildly known.

It's called the Kaiserschmarrn.

The emperor, what is called in German, the kaiser

came to a restaurant.

The chef was not too happy with the order

and he ordered a pancake and he was not too happy

and just ripped it apart.

If you ripped something apart

and you want to just eat a bunch of pieces, its a schmarrn.

The kaiser ate that and he loved it so much.

So that recipe was named after the emperor,

the Kaiserschmarrn.

It's a great dish.

So let's make the butter here.

We start with the flour, the milk, pinch a salt here,

and then you put the eggs in there.

We separated the eggs from the egg white, the yokes.

So the main batter is made here.

Instead of using baking powder, we just use a bit egg white,

it makes it really nice and fluffy.

[groovy music] [mixer whirring]

Nice and stiff.

That's how we like it here.

And then you fold it in,

but you want to keep it as light, as fluffy as possible.

There we have the butter.

We have the pan now.

A non-stick is really crucial.

We have your clarified butter.

If you don't have clarified butter at home,

regular butter will do as well.

You don't have to do it too hot.

It will go in the oven anyway.

We gonna put this all in here.

Here I have some raisin.

I soaked them in rum.

I just put them in here and let's put in the oven.

Oh yeah, it looks ready.

The way how it's really done you just,

you go check first it's cooked.

Yep, it's cooked.

Don't really worry about ripping it

because that's the fun part.

It should be ripped. Look at that.

My mother always cut it in four pieces.

It was easier to flip it over like this.

We'll give it a little bit heat

so the bottom side can also grab a little bit hotter.

Just break that thing up in the pan.

It's ready to eat now.

And here I have the rum I used to soak the raisins in

and there's a little bit sugar here.

There was nothing in the batter what was sweet.

So we do need somewhere as a dessert, some sweetness to it,

a little bit caramelized sugar.

Now we are gonna do a fun part. Here's the rum.

Never put the rum in here over open fire.

Always go away a little bit.

And then we have it here.

And if you wanna make fun.

Yay. There it is. [laughing]

Put this back in here.

One quick toss. That's it.

That's all we need.

Should we put definitely powder of sugar in there.

And there it is.

[groovy music]

Nice fluffy. It goes all good together.

We, Mexicans love corn.

So I'm making corn hotcakes pancakes with pomegranates.

piloncillo, [speaking Spanish], cajeta and ricotta cheese.

I'm gonna be making everything in the blender.

So we make everything here, blend it together

and then cook the pancakes as we need it.

I want my pancakes to be sweet

and also want the flavor of the corn.

I'm going to add some buttermilk

and we're going to puree this

'cause I want the corn to disappear.

My batter is gonna be more on the fluffy, soft, sweet side.

So now I'm gonna add two eggs.

Baking soda, baking butter, salt.

A little bit of extract of vanilla.

I'm gonna some piloncillo.

Piloncillo basically is raw sugar

with a caramel taste and it's delicious.

All purpose flour.

Now I'm just gonna start it slow.

I like to make things easier.

And this way it's faster.

You don't have to use so many utensils.

And then I'm gonna do a little bit of brown butter.

It's gonna add that butter flavor that everybody loves.

Our pancake batter is ready. Medium heat.

I'm gonna do like around six to eight pancakes.

And this is the beautiful part about doing this in blender

'cause there is not a lot of mess.

So I'm gonna do six of this.

I'm gonna do a little bit of pomegranate.

Pomegranates are very common in Mexico.

We use that a lot in chilies, [Speaking Spanish].

Every single bite I want you to have an explosion

in your mouth.

Be like, Whoa, where is this came from?

That was a pomegranate.

And I'm gonna do a little bit of corn

'cause I want the sweetness and flavor of a corn.

1, 2, 3, go.

If you see one thing,

like right here's a lot here and not here,

that's telling you, turn me around.

Okay, let's see this one.

[gasping] Oh my god, it's like a gift.

It's filled of surprises.

[Speaking Spanish] My pancakes are done.

Now we're gonna garnish,

I'm gonna do a little bit of ricotta

with lemon zest and piloncillo.

Creamy, sweet with a little bit of acidity.

Cajeta, goat's milk caramel.

This is our Mexican syrup.

And pomegranates. Everything in one plate.

Nice and fluffy. Holy moly guacamole.

[groovy music]

That's it.

Today I'll be making homestyle buttermilk pancakes.

I like it simple.

I'm gonna do a version that's an ode

to the classic American pancake.

Perfect for your diner plate.

We'll start off by making the batter.

You don't wanna mix your batter until you're ready to cook

because the leavening agents rise

and you want to catch that perfect moment

where you're gonna get the fluffiest pancakes.

So to start, buttermilk, whole milk, three farm eggs

with those beautiful yellow yolks, melted butter,

and some vanilla extract.

And you just wanna mix so everything's nice

and combined and homogenous.

Next we'll move on to our dry ingredient, all-purpose flour,

granulated sugar, baking powder, which helps it rise.

Baking soda, which helps flatten.

Last ingredient, salt.

Next, you're gonna mix just until combined.

You wanna make sure that you're not over mixing,

which will give you a tough and hard pancake.

My favorite thing to use is a stainless steel skillet

around 12 to 14 inches.

So you can get those nice big flapjacks that you want.

You can always use non-stick

if you're afraid of things sticking.

But if you made your butter right

and you're using the right amount of grease,

you can cook them on this.

I mix olive oil and butter together.

I want the flavor and the crispiness from the butter,

but I want the olive oil

to keep the butter from burning.

Kind of matches each other up.

Right between medium to low heat.

The thing with pancakes,

you never wanna keep it at the same temperature.

You always wanna play when it gets too hot.

Turn it down if you feel like it's getting too cold.

You know your pancakes are cooking nice and good

when you see some bubbles rising through to the top,

once you see you've started to cook a little bit

around the outsides

and you're just set in the middle, it's time to flip,

tap around the middle a little bit.

And once it starts to feel a little bit firm,

that's when you know it's ready to take it out of the pan.

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Now we've got our last pancake. Time to dress 'em up.

My favorite way to do it is the simplest way of all.

A little pad of salted butter, right on the middle.

And then you can put as much or as little syrup as you want.

You can put it on the side and dip.

But if you're a real one, you're drenching it.

And there's the pancakes.

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Mm, yum. Salty, crispy, buttery.

Exactly what you want for a pancake.

Okay, so today we're making Shrove Tuesday style pancakes.

Shrove Tuesday, it's a religious holiday.

It's 40 days before Easter signifying Lent.

So we're gonna take all of the fatty things

out of the cupboards.

We'd usually eat these in the evening time,

like after dinner on Shrove Tuesday,

kind of like be the desserts

and get us ready for a period of abstinence.

This is gonna be a flat, thin pancake.

Fun thing to make, kids love it.

Milk in a bowl, two eggs.

You don't want to incorporate too much air into this mix.

The important thing here is to make it a nice smooth batter.

Dump the flour in, little pinch of salt,

a little pinch of sugar.

You don't have to worry about making this in advance.

It's not a batter that needs to rest for a long time.

Super quick, super easy.

And that's the batter pretty much ready to go.

Ready to cook these guys.

I've got a stainless steel pan, it's ripping hot.

So just a lick of oil in the bottom of the pan.

We're gonna go in with about three ounces

of our pancake mix.

You wanna see that sizzle. That's great.

And then we're just gonna let this guy sizzle away

and cook.

Presents a lot like a crepe at this point.

But we're gonna cook this harder than a crepe.

We wanna have a nice bit of color on here

and you'll see just around the edges

the batter starts to set.

Gonna come away from the pan itself

and then it's gonna be ready to flip.

This freely moves in the pan here

and that's exactly what you're looking for.

Gotta get this right or my mom will kill me.

Here we go. And that's exactly what we're looking for.

A nice bit of color, fully cooked.

I'm gonna put a little bit of butter

in the bottom of the pan here, which is gonna help

with the color on the other side.

You wanna finish this in the center with a touch of orange,

a little bit of sugar, and then you quarter it in the pan.

And that's our pancake.

I'm just gonna finish with a touch of butter.

Just a little bit more sugar.

It's actually been years since I made one of these,

so I'm excited to try it.

[groovy music]

Tastes like childhood. Yeah, that's great.

My mom would be proud.

So we are making baghrir is the Algerian pancake.

In France, we actually call it the crepe of 1000 hole

due to the fermentation.

Mostly served for breakfast

and mostly served for afternoon tea.

Well, I'm going to start with adding semolina

that I'm gonna put into the blender.

Regular flour, 00 Flour is totally fine.

Salt just for the fermentation

and the water has to be a little warm

to help the fermentation to go a little bit faster.

Baking powder, usually I always wait like five to 10 minutes

to add the second baking powder.

Levure because it will help the fermentation

to be really bubbly.

You wanna blend it 30 to 40 seconds so it mixed in

with the rest of the dough.

Sit it in a warm area, at least 30 minutes.

You're gonna see the texture of the dough is bubbly.

You don't need to add any butter to the pan

because then it will fry the pancake.

So the best way is to have a non-stick pan

with nothing in it.

Cook for at least until the bottom is a little bit golden.

And you only have to cook one side of it.

So I'm gonna take that one away. Gonna make another one.

I just want to really show you like the texture of the crepe

and how you can see the thousand hole.

We usually top it with some butter.

Oh, this is so good.

Adding some beautiful orange blossom honey.

And I like to top that with some fresh mint.

And I like to spray the date, the honey and the butter.

It's like everything goes into each hole.

And that's add the whole flavor into the pancake.

So when you eat it, roll it like a tortillas

and you get all the flavor of the butter,

the mint and the date.

[groovy music]

Mm. [speaking a foreign language]

I didn't grow up, like the American pancake

that you guys have it here.

But I grew up eating tapioca.

Tapioca is made from cassava.

It's basically hydrated cassava starch.

Here I'm gonna teach you guys

how to make those like tapioca crepes

that I grew up eating it for breakfast.

Once I put the tapioca here, they stick together like magic

and become this little crepe.

So you don't need water, you don't need egg,

you don't need like anything.

My pan is warmed up.

I'm gonna just put like my tapioca here.

I want it even, I don't want it to get like thicker

in one side, thinner in the other one.

And then if it's too thin, you just add a little bit more.

See how it sort of like to stick together.

It's a very thin layer.

If you do like a very thick tapioca

it get too chewy.

Thin as a paper.

And then I can add like my dulce de leche.

This de leche is our version of caramel,

but please don't call it caramel.

It's not caramel. Make with milk and sugar.

Use it for cakes for crepes.

And I'm gonna put my bananas

and then I'm just gonna close the crepe.

It's so simple. It's like magic.

Are you guys ready for some crispy, messy Brazilian pancake?

Ooh, look at this. Sexy.

And it's like crispy too.

[groovy music]

It's a really good pre-workout. [laughing]

So what we are making today,

we call kanom krok, a Thai style pancake.

It's so simple and so easy to make.

Kanom krok it's something that you can find

in any fresh market in the morning.

It's small and it's sweet and it's delicious.

Ingredients for kanom krok, it's so basic.

Rice flour, coconut sugar, salt.

Coconut sugar has less sweetness,

but then it has the creaminess and aroma.

So we add the sugar for the sweetness.

Water. In the end, it's coconut milk.

Now we're trying to make all the coconut sugar

melt into the batter.

Jasmine rice will make the texture firmer.

[blender whirring]

The second one will be the sauce on the top.

I'll add coconut of milk into sauce pan.

Rice flour, because we need the second layer

to be a little thicker.

We wanna use the medium heat.

Then we gotta add some coconut sugar,

a little bit of regular sugar.

We are getting the consistency that we need.

It's a little thicker for the second layer of this pancake.

This is the pan that we are going to use for kanom krok.

Now we're gonna spray them with cooking spray.

[spray can shushing]

We are going to use medium heat first.

Now we are gonna put the first layer, not too full

because you need the space for the second layer too.

It's a little bit shallow.

The way we use the batter, if it's too deep,

it will be really hard

to make the texture cook perfectly.

Now we are gonna cover it.

I can't really say how long it would take.

This is something about Thai cooking

that we don't really have specific timing.

Everything has to be relation between you and your food.

It's a little firm around the edge

and still a little bit liquid-y in the middle.

And now we gonna top with the second layer.

Just only a little bit. Cover again.

We'll wait until the whole thing get firm.

It smells so nice from jasmine rice, coconut milk.

This is the texture that you want.

It will melt in your mouth when you eat it.

Oh yeah, look at that.

The golden bottom. That's what we looking for.

You can see that.

I can see it's crispy around it too.

You can offer your guests

to choose their own topping and do it themselves.

I have young coconut meat, corn, and scallion.

This is it. Kanom krok or Thai pancake.

I like it more savory.

So I'm gonna try the one with scallion.

[groovy music]

Hmm. I don't know if you hear that.

The crunch from the skin. Mm, perfect.

So delicious.

We are making a Nigerian styled pancake, jebe-jebe.

That means just to eat it like that.

It's very thin, not fluffy at all. We make them from home.

It's not really something you would see in a restaurant.

We don't add syrup to this. No.

This pancake is just like eating bread

and a egg for breakfast.

It's just another alternative.

To make the Nigerian pancake,

we're gonna start off with our flour.

Pinch of salt, baking powder, sugar.

And we have some cinnamon.

Nutmeg is also optional.

Now for our wet ingredients.

Two eggs, bit of butter, chopped onion

and the star of the show,

some scotch bonnet.

Can't really ask an African person how spicy something is

because [laughing] you understand.

So if you're like a mild person,

probably don't attempt this at all.

If you like to try different things,

open to spice levels, feel free.

Add evaporated milk and just a little bit of water here.

Evaporated milk is what's mostly available to us back home,

unless you live on the farm.

It's very expensive offshore.

Normally my fellow Nigerians add a little razzle dazzle

and put some Titus fish or mackerel fish and stir that up.

And that's their lunch. But we're gonna keep it very simple.

Our batter is ready and we are ready to fry these pancakes.

We have our non-stick pan right here

and we have some vegetable oil.

The way that we prepare the pancake

is very similar to an omelet.

It needs to be very thin, crispy edges, thin on the inside.

You can just fry it on both sides

for about one and a half minutes.

And once it starts to get brown on the outside,

you flip that bad boy.

The little lumpy parts are actually the grated onion.

I just want you guys to take a good look at this.

How thin it is. Light. Wow, look at that.

Very simple. Hmm.

[groovy music]

Perfect, perfect, perfect.

Doesn't need any syrup or none of that.

I'm going to make a fermented rice pancakes.

Been popular in the east part of China

for a really long time.

Growing up I would see every street there will be a vendor

selling this fermented pancakes.

Has a slightly chewy bouncy texture.

It's very soft and tender as well.

So I have some fermented sweet rice here.

Traditionally made with a leftover rice,

in kanji [speaking Chinese].

The starter culture will break down the starch in rice

into sugars, then convert them into alcohol and acid.

Think about sourdough, right? The same concept.

This is how I make them add home.

Warm water.

And I'm going to add some yeast to speed up the process.

And then sugar. Same thing.

And then I'm going to add rice flour, fermented sweet rice

and the yeast water into one bowl.

Whisk until that you don't see any dry flour.

We'll cover and then let it proof for two to three hours.

You can see now the batter is proved

and then you'll see big bubbles.

Gentle stir to remove big bubbles.

We're still keeping the smaller bubbles

to make them extra fluffy.

I have the heat on medium they are touching, which is okay.

We're only fry the one side

and then the top side, we're actually going to steam it.

So I'm gonna add just a little bit of water

and I'm going to let it steam.

Once you see the bubbles on top

and in the honeycomb shape, they're done.

It's golden on both sides. Pancakes is cooked.

You can actually enjoy them as they are,

but I like to enjoy it in a old fashioned way.

Stuff them with youtiao, the fried cruller,

going to fold them

and eat them like a sandwich.

You can serve them with some soy milk or milk.

[groovy music]

Hmm. So good.

It's very comforting.

I am making a Colombian arepa de choclo.

Arepa de choclo are made with fresh corn

it's kind of the treat that you get when you are traveling.

You will find these beautiful like roadside restaurants

and they make arepa de choclo with cheese there

as a treat in the way to get into your other destination.

We are gonna start making our [speaking Spanish],

our batter.

So we are gonna start with the corn,

add our egg, sugar.

And then some salt, corn flour to bind better.

And then some butter. Because butter is taste.

I think that we can add a little bit of milk.

[blender whirring]

Our batter is ready now. Turn on this stove.

You can put butter.

But I'm gonna do this spray

to create like an even coat.

We're gonna drop it like a pancake.

The temperature is gonna be medium low.

I want to create a really, really nice color

of caramelization, but also to be cooked perfectly.

I love cheese. Cheese is my love language.

It's really important that you choose a cheese that melts,

double cream cheese.

And I check the color over here.

Then I do. That's it.

So, okay, I'm gonna remove this from the frier.

Instead of using maple syrup, I make melado de panela.

Panela is raw sugar cooked and compact.

We use it for so many different purposes,

like melado de panela, we use it as a sweetener.

If you cook it and reduce it

and infuse it with a little bit of spices,

cloves, cinnamon, anise star.

I get to do this kind of my own version of maple syrup.

[groovy music]

Hm. It's like an American pancake, but better.

[laughing] Way too much better actually.

Ah, these are actually so good.

This should be the Mexican national pancakes.

[groovy music fades]