Dad’s “Clean Your Plate” Buttermilk Pancakes
In those moments, my Dad would look over, with an irresistible smile on his face and say, “You need help finishing that, Whether of not I ever needed assistance finishing the food on my plate, I don’t remember, but my Dad always, always ate the last few bites on my plate. After a few years of this sort of training, I suppose I just started leaving food on my plate for him to finish.
There were exceptions of course, anything involving french fries, ice cream or pancakes were mine all mine. Don’t get me wrong. I certainly didn’t go hungry. I simply learned to put more on my plate than I could eat, knowing my Dad would eagerly finish my scraps. These days, I don’t get to share a dinner table with my parents every night, but I still manage to leave a few bites on food untouched on my plate.
I do love to talk my Dad into making Saturday morning pancakes. By the time I make the spontaneous call and drive the 30 minutes to their house, the pancakes are already half way to the skillet. One thing is for sure, on pancake mornings, I finish my plate all on my own, and sometime even cast a longing look at my Dad’s plate.
Funny how that works. Whisk together milk, eggs and vegetable oil in a medium bowl, then whisk in the butter. Stir together flour, baking powder, sugar and salt in another medium bowl. Whisk in egg mixture until combined. Spray a griddle or skillet with nonstick vegetable spray. Working in batches of 3 (or 6 if your griddle will allow) pour 1/3-cup measures of batter onto skillet and cool until bubbles have formed on the top and sides of the pancakes and broken, about 2 minutes.
Flip pancakes with a spatula and cook until undersides are golden, about 1 minute more. Lower heat if pancakes brown too quickly. Serve with maple syrup or molasses. I think it’s amazing that so many of you have fond memories of this salt shaker. I know that it’s been in our family kitchen for as long as I can remember. Funny what fond memories you share with strangers!
Since this milk mixture is not as thick as buttermilk, the batter and resulting pancakes will not be as thick. Mix dry ingredients in medium bowl. Pour buttermilk and milk (or the milk/vinegar or lemon substitute) into 2-cup Pyrex measuring cup. Whisk in egg white. Mix yolk with melted butter, then stir the butter yolk mixture into the milk/egg white mixture.
Dump the resulting mixture of wet ingredients into dry ingredients all at once; whisk until just mixed. Allow to rest for five minutes. In the meantime, heat griddle or large skillet over strong medium-high heat. Brush griddle generously with oil. When water splashed on surface confidently sizzles, pour batter, about ¼ cup at a time, onto griddle, making sure not to overcrowd.
When pancake bottoms are brown and top surface starts to bubble, 2 to 3 minutes, flip cakes and cook until remaining side has browned, 1 to 2 minutes longer. Re-oil the skillet and repeat for the next batch of pancakes. This makes 8 smallish pancakes, about 4 inches across. Batter may be doubled or tripled.
If making a large batch, have the oven on at 250 degrees, and a have a sheet tray in oven. Place cooked pancakes in oven to keep warm before serving. Pancakes freeze well. Lay them flat on a plastic wrapped sheet tray and store with plastic between them in a Ziploc bag when frozen. If you want blueberry pancakes, add 1/4 cup blueberries to the batter. I’ll be posting Cooks Illustrated Buttermilk Pancakes at Fiesta Friday 232, hosted this week by Laurena @ Life Diet Health and Jenny @ Apply To Face Blog. Stop over, mingle a bit and check out all the best food blogger recipes for the week, all in one place.
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