12 Chefs Make Pancakes (Michelin Star, Diner & More)

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Pancakes are deceptively

more complicated than they look.

The first step, we're gonna make our batter.

All purpose flour, sifting it.

It's breaking up any clumps.

It's also gonna aerate the flour.

It's gonna allow me to mix the batter

and hydrate it more quickly

so I have less chance of over mixing it.

Baking powder is baking soda with some friends

that are gonna activate the sodium bicarbonate.

It's gonna create carbon dioxide,

add some leavening to the pancakes.

I'm gonna add an egg.

Melted butter should not be hot

because it's gonna start to cook the egg

and curdle the milk.

Always add wet to dry.

If you add dry to wet, it's gonna puff up

and it's also gonna clump up the flour as well.

This is very easy to overwork.

Once all the large lumps have disappeared,

it looks very even, this is when I can tell

who's been paying attention in class

is that they stop mixing

because the gluten has been formed.

If we keep working them,

we're gonna develop a product

that's very strong and very gummy,

which is great for things

like pizza dough and bagels.

But for a pancake,

we wanna emphasize the cake part.

I have a non-stick pan, medium high heat.

We start to see the baking soda,

making carbon dioxide bubbles.

We're ready to flip it.

When the outside looks a little more dry

and a little more cooked

and the bubbles breaking in the center,

stay open.

This is another important step,

but do not push down your pancake.

We created all the carbon dioxide we wanna trap

it in there.

Pushing it down, you're gonna get rid

of all the air that we worked so hard.

Start to smell the pancake.

That's usually a good indicator that it's done.

These pancakes look perfect to me.

They look handmade.

They're lovely golden color.

I have no complaints.

So we do have pancakes in France,

but we don't call them pancakes.

We call them crêpes.

We gonna make what we call Crêpes Suzette.

So very old dish.

And you're gonna find thousand of recipe,

but this one is the best.

So first I'm gonna mix some AP flour.

You don't want the crêpes

to fall apart in the pan,

so you need a solid flour.

Just a pinch of salt,

a little, we say fizz on your tongue

when you eat the crêpes.

Now wet ingredients.

Four whole eggs.

I add three more egg yolks.

It's for the color.

The consistency is gonna be a lot more moist.

Vanilla paste.

The paste still have the seed

inside the vanilla.

You get more perfume into your crêpes

to your mouth.

I'm gonna make a hole.

Start slowly from the middle

and if I do a good job,

there will be no lump at the end.

I can add my beautiful French butter.

Orange zest.

You have to mix it a lot,

but to develop the gluten,

you have to leave the dough to rest

for at least 12 hours.

This is a special pan for crêpes.

Doesn't have the side too high

so it's easy to flip it.

All I'm looking for is gonna start

to get burn around.

When it start to do that,

it's time for me to flip it.

It's like a French tortilla, you know.

The crêpes are done.

Now we're gonna make the sauce Suzette.

I made a special orange butter.

Gonna melt the butter in the pan.

We're gonna add the zest.

Cook it for three minutes.

Then we add the crêpes in the butter

and then we flambé with Grand Marnier.

So orange liquor.

It's beautiful, has a lot of flavor.

It's good with food.

Why do we flambé?

We just want the flavor of the liquor,

the alcohol evaporate

and you only have the the flavor.

Voila!

Crêpes Suzette!

The pancake I'm gonna show you today

actually some really unique elements

that help keep that pancake nice and fresh

even though you might have had it 10 hours

after it was made.

You know, if someone's gonna eat this

in an airplane up in the sky nine hours

into their flight, it has to be tasty,

be digestible, flavorful.

Start with our all-purpose flour.

We're gonna add in our baking powder.

We need to have salt on this so

that the food tastes flavorful,

but I can't put too much salt.

That's not good for in flight

causes inflammation, causes swelling.

So really being careful not to add too much salt.

If the glucose index is too high in your food,

you'll get a big sugar spike.

when you're sitting in an airplane

and then your sugar crashes

and now you're tired and you need to go work,

you don't wanna be crashing.

I'm adding the ricotta cheese into our eggs

to add a really nice fat,

as well as adding protein.

It's going to help lower the glucose index

of the pancakes.

We're adding our milk now, orange zest,

and the honey has a better glucose index

than sugar you might find in your pantry.

Now add our dry ingredients.

We are now gonna

use some egg whites for leavening.

It helps get me some protein.

The pan's about medium heat.

I don't want to have a very rich oily dish.

So just a little bit oil just

to make sure things don't stick.

If they reheated this onboard

in just a regular old oven,

it would probably be a little dry.

The new aircraft, now they have combination ovens

that inject steams.

So these are not going to be dry cardboard.

So this is the foil kit.

This is what the crew would see

when they pull it out of the oven,

ready to plate.

And that whole kit is sitting in a refrigerator

until it is put into the oven

by the aircraft crew.

And they're gonna use this all sectioned out

to plate exactly the way I've plated for us here.

So I'm adding some cinnamon spiced apples.

We have some creme fresh mixed

with a little maple syrup in lieu

of maple syrup alone.

Put a little blueberries

for some garnish here.

Voila.

We do pancakes every single breakfast,

anything from 40 to 50 orders a day.

These pancake mix, we buy it,

but then we tweak it.

We make the way we want it.

So we're gonna mix

all the wet ingredients together.

Sour cream is gonna give you like this punch.

Buttermilk is bitter.

Like if you taste it, you say, Oh my god.

But this bitter in it with the pancake mix,

they're gonna marry together

and once they marry, it's gonna be amazing.

Now we're gonna mix it gentle.

Don't go crazy on it.

If you mix it too much,

it's not gonna give the puff.

It's gonna be like, Eh.

It gets flat.

The way we do pancakes in Brooklyn Diner

is in the pan and we bake it

because the thicker is fluffy.

Normal pancakes is done on the flat top,

they're thinner and most of the time,

they're like dry.

Can you hear the sizzling?

These are [hissing].

It's kind of breathing.

You can see holes.

That's music.

I'm just like, Oh my god, I love it.

At this time we're gonna put 'em in the oven.

The pancake was in the oven for a couple minutes.

You see it?

It's nice and formed.

So now we're gonna flip it.

1, 2, 3.

Voila.

You see that?

Tell me, isn't that the sexiest pancake

you ever seen in your life?

Once I put the pancake,

you're not gonna see the blueberry sauce.

But then once you eat it, you're gonna taste it

and you're gonna say, Oh my God.

Once again you might say, Chef,

that's too much blueberry sauce.

I know.

I am the chef.

All right?

Thank you very much.

Fresh blueberries for sure.

Some cream on top.

This is the way I do it.

You wanna come to visit me?

Brooklyn Diner, anytime.

A Blini is a smaller pancake, savory pancake.

Traditionally served alongside caviar.

We love to start our meal with a bite of caviar

and this is the perfect vehicle for it.

We're adding a few ingredients here

to make it more luxurious.

I'm gonna mix the crème fraîche

with the potato while it's still warm

and get a nice emulsified base here.

All my dry ingredients

and have a little bit of flour,

touch of buckwheat flour,

which gives it a little toasty and nutty note.

Gonna mix the dry and then incorporate it

into the potato and crème fraîche mixture.

Add my eggs, one at a time and incorporate it.

And once that's incorporated,

let it rest for a little while,

maybe 20, 30 minutes.

So we would make this ahead of service,

put it in a squeeze bottle with the top cut,

allows us to put little portions in

and make it perfect round instead of trying

to spoon it onto the pan.

It's gotten a little bit brown

and crisper on the edges.

Not bad for the first one.

So yeah, once they've flipped

and cooked a little longer on the other side,

I can tell it's cooked through.

It's not mushy, it's not soft in a way

that I can tell there's raw batter.

So I'm just gonna pull 'em off, let them rest.

Allow the inside, the potato, the eggs to set.

So this is a little bit of egg salad.

I love egg and caviar together.

And then what's better than eggs and pancakes?

This is a pretty classic egg salad that we do.

Use some Japanese mustard powder

to give it a little more of that pungency

and bite to it.

So for the caviar I'm using wooden spoons.

Traditionally you don't wanna use

anything metallic 'cause it can react

with the the caviar itself

and give it a little bit of an off taste.

Using a little bit of dill to garnish.

And then if we're serving this

to a table of three people,

pop three canapes on the plate.

This is the perfect start to a tasting menu.

Today I'm gonna make some

blueberry protein pancakes.

Oftentimes I will include protein in my recipes

because my clients will eat this

after an intense workout.

They have to feed the muscles.

So in a bowl we're gonna add in one cup

of all purpose flour,

one tablespoon of brown sugar, granulated sugar,

one teaspoon of baking powder,

half a teaspoon baking soda,

and then one scoop of vanilla protein powder.

Combined all my wet ingredient.

We have three fourth cups of milk,

one egg, a teaspoon of vanilla extract,

as well as one stick of melted butter.

These pancakes will not taste like protein.

I'm using a vanilla protein,

so it's gonna actually

compliment the blueberry taste.

Blueberries are another healthy aspect

you can add to your pancakes.

They're full of antioxidants,

they're gonna add a nice pop of color.

Little hint of salt.

And our batter looks ready.

It's nice and thick.

I do have to make pancakes in large quantities

for my NFL clients because these are grown men

that eat like monsters.

And using a griddle is ideal

so you can put a lot out at one time

and then flip them all in the order

that you put them down.

These are looking really good

and now it's time to plate.

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And these are my blueberry pancakes.

Bánh Xèo is gonna be a very

thin Vietnamese pancake.

You can fill it with whatever you like.

In this case,

the shrimp, chorizo served with herbs,

mint, lettuce and like a sweet chili sauce.

Our batter, it's gonna have rice flour.

It adds lightness to the dish.

It's gonna add a little bit of crunch to it.

There is a little bit of AP flour in there

for the structure, but the idea is

to have a thin crêpe as opposed to something

that's kind of thicker.

So you have some turmeric for some color,

salt, some coconut milk and some water.

An immersion blender.

This is probably one of my favorite tools

in the kitchen.

Okay, now that's all mixed together,

we want to add scallion ends.

Key here is to make sure that it sits

for 10 to 15 minutes.

So our pan's getting a little hot here.

I wanna throw a little shiitake mushrooms,

a little bit of onion, some chorizo.

Chorizo is going to be a Spanish cured pork product

and it's seasoned with a lot of spices,

in this case, smoked paprika.

The diaspora of Spanish cuisine has entered a lot

of different cultures in the world

and so this is a fun way of kind

of having this natural integration

of these cuisines.

I want one single layer, kind of like an omelet.

I wanna make sure that it's coated completely

underneath the pan.

I'm looking for the sides to crisp up.

And then all I'm gonna do is I'm gonna add some

of the bean sprouts folded in there.

The turmeric in here, it's kind of funny,

makes it look like an omelet but no eggs in here.

And served with the pancake,

mint, cilantro as well as a sweet dipping sauce.

I'm going to make the Japanese pancake.

So very fluffy and light.

I gonna make pancake dough.

Egg is four pieces.

Butter is room temperature.

And the special item, the yogurt.

Taste is very light.

Then flour.

And 5% matcha, already mixed.

Matcha is a Japanese green tea powder.

Right now it looks not smoothie

but after cook, pancake's very smooth.

Medium high heat, fry pound.

I put the rings, make a round shape.

[indistinct] is cover.

Steamed pancake is puffy.

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Five six minute steam.

Pancake's almost done.

The decoration is a custard sauce,

Japanese matcha sauce, whipped cream,

strawberry and chestnuts, granola,

Japanese little bean paste,

matcha ice cream, then lots of mint,

powdered sugar.

Oh.

There is my pancake.

Today I'm gonna be making [indistinct]

or Manicotti.

It is a pasta or pancake baked in sauce

and with melted crunchy cheese on the top.

So first we make the batter.

Whisk together whole eggs

until they are very light and fluffy.

Add milk.

We don't want any lumps of flour.

We want some structure to them

without them being bready.

Rest for at least three or four hours.

I'm gonna add melted butter.

I add it last so we don't wind up

with a greasy batter.

I'm using a thin pan

and it will cook very quickly

so that we don't have a tough pancake.

So now I'm gonna flip.

No problem.

Quick cook on the other side and out.

Mixing the batter up

from the bottom to the top to make sure

that any flour that has settled

to the bottom comes up to the top.

The filling for the Manicotti today,

we have a filling that incorporates

roast pork sandwich of Philadelphia.

Diced roast pork, braised broccoli rabe

American provolone, parsley

and 'cause it's Manicotti filling,

ricotta and olive oil.

Our red sauce into the roasting dish.

Do a little [indistinct].

Right into the sauce.

A little more red sauce on top.

Some grated provolone cheese

so it can get all bubbly

and caramelly and cheesy.

Put these in the oven for 30 to 45 minutes.

I'm finishing with salsa verde

made with preserved long hot peppers,

the hot pepper of Philadelphia.

This is Manicotti in a style

of Philly's famous roast pork sandwich.

We take the breakfast very seriously

at the Plaza Hotel.

That's the first experience at the Plaza Hotel

to have an omelet or have a nice pancake.

This butter is like our secret recipe since 1970.

What I have added on this

is the egg white foam.

Gently fold in the egg whites in

and just making sure you will not overmix it.

An egg white is very good trick

for a fluffy pancake.

So now we're having the clarified butter,

but I'm looking for making sure the pan

is not too much hot.

When you flip it in the other side,

it's gonna be becoming really more fluffy

because of the egg white.

When there is a guest order in

like for room surface,

it's gonna take maybe in the 18th floor,

the egg white will make sure the pan cake

will stay fluffy and fresh.

[indistinct] Sugar powder,

making sure it's all covered.

Bless our three pieces of chocolate chip

really giving that sweetness to the pancake.

And there is one more thing we do at The Plaza

to make it very special.

It's a stamp with The Plaza logo

on top of the pancake.

I use box mix and it's just the best thing

to do 'cause it's easy.

It's gonna end up sort of the same anyways.

Even though you're using a box mix,

a vanilla extract.

It elevates it.

And then we're using a little bit of cinnamon

'cause cinnamon is always great

for making things feel cozy.

I don't like to pre-measure my butter.

I like to add it in my hand

or with the stick because I feel

like you can tell the amount better

that you're gonna put in.

And if it starts to become too much,

then it's not all already in the pan.

Okay, we're gonna get out the tool.

This is my pot slash pan cover.

I like putting lids on pancakes

because I think it just again, cooks faster.

Ooh, that was so good.

It looks so pretty.

I got this at Home Goods.

So maybe it's supposed to be a cutting board.

I really don't think so.

This is a strawberry compote I made.

And we've got a strawberry

that I shaped like a rose.

There we go.

So today we are making pancakes

with a beautiful sauce made

out of frozen blueberries, cinnamon, and sugar.

We receive our items pre-cooked

to ensure the quality and nutritional standards.

You can imagine how many kids we're feeding

every single day is over a million.

So we need consistency

all throughout New York City.

Our pancakes are at least 51% whole grain.

This way we ensure a high contents

of fiber into the grains

that we're serving daily.

So the first thing I'm gonna do is pop this

into the oven.

We try to introduce a fresh element,

and in this case we're gonna

have a nice blueberry compote.

At the moment, we're just making a portion

that would feed roughly five people,

but these recipes can usually feed

anywhere from 800 to 1000 kids.

Water into a heavy bottom pot,

one tablespoon of brown sugar.

I have a big sweet tooth,

but our meals are low sodium,

low sugar, low fat.

Some lemon zest.

Just to brighten it up a bit,

I add cinnamon powder.

Bring in some nice aromatics as well.

The dairy component will be chocolate milk.

Our blueberry compote,

and then an additional fruit peach.

Here we have a perfectly nutritional

balanced meal for our kids.

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That is so good. Delicious.

It's delicious. I've been working two years

and a half at The Plaza.

This is my daily.

Yeah, there's nothing better than that.

[Chef] I just love it.