Have we been making pancakes wrong this whole time? Japan’s Zen-Noh shares the best technique

For fluffy flapjacks, there’s something you need to do right at the very start.

Japan’s Zen-Noh, also known as the Japan Agricultural Cooperatives Group’s National Federation of Agricultural Cooperative Associations (so yeah, we’re going to call them Zen-Noh) has given us some awesome and easy cooking ideas in the past, like with their recipes for rice cooker bacon onion rice and roasted persimmons.

But pancakes? Thanks, Zen-Noh, but we think we’ve got this, especially since we’re not so fancy as to insist on making them from scratch. Using a store-bought mix, all we have to do is pour the mix into a bowl, add milk, crack an egg, stir everything up, and then grill it with a skillet, right?

According to Zen-Noh, though, that’s only half right. Sure, you could make pancakes like we just described, and Zen-Noh recommends those exact same steps…they just don’t recommend them in that order.

ホットケーキを焼くときは、
　
　卵と牛乳を混ぜてから
　
ミックスを入れると、ふわふわになります（生地を混ぜ過ぎると膨らみにくくなる）。なんだかミックスを先にボウルに入れたくなりますが、ぐっとこらえて、卵と牛乳が先です！前もつぶやいたのですけど今日が #ホットケーキの日 だったので pic.twitter.com/cBtLKpiZCc

— 全農広報部【公式】日本の食を味わう (@zennoh_food) January 25, 2022

January 25 was “Hotcake Day,” one of Japan’s many quasi-holidays, and Zen-Noh took the opportunity to remind everyone of the optimal way to make sure your pancakes come out extra-fluffy: add the powdered pancake mix last. As shown in the photo series the organization tweeted, the eggs should go into the bowl first, then the milk. Stir those two ingredients together, then add the pancake mix and stir once more to finish the batter that you’re going to cook.

“For some reason, it’s common to want to add the mix first, but resist the urge and combine the eggs and milk first!” Zen-Noh says, and the reason for that temptation isn’t too hard to imagine. If you start with the eggs and milk, you’re going to be pouring the powder into a bowl of liquid, which means more danger of splashing. Stirring the powder too much, though, will lessen how fluffy the batter can get during cooking, so by stirring the eggs and milk by themselves first, you can reduce how much stirring the powder goes through.

Flapjack fans have responded to the tweet with 80,000 likes and counting, and with Pancake Day falling on a Tuesday this year, odds are a lot of people are going to be taking Zen-Noh’s advice this weekend, and even though we’ve already got one special way to make pancakes, we’re happy to have another.

Source: Twitter/@zennoh_food via Hachima Kiko
Top image: Pakutaso
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