FULL RECIPE & INGREDIENTS BELOW TO COOK ALONG WITH Everybody thinks they’ve got the best pancake recipe… but most pancakes go from fluffy to flat in minutes. In this video, we’re sharing our ultimate Michelin-inspired pancake recipe. A light, souffle-style pancake that stays fluffy, holds its structure, and delivers serious flavour. This is the at-home version of a restaurant method inspired by Pavilion in London and refined through our own testing (and a little research into New York’s viral Golden Diner pancakes too)
Instead of relying on baking powder or bicarb, this recipe builds structure the chef’s way: • Whipped egg whites stabilised with lemon juice • Cornstarch for long-lasting volume • Gentle folding for maximum air retention • Low and slow cooking for perfect lift • A black butter maple glaze finished with soy sauce for deep umami sweetness The result? A pancake that’s dense and light at the same time — more like a souffle than a standard buttermilk pancake.
We also break down: – Why most pancakes collapse – The science of acid in egg whites – The difference between brown butter and black butter (190°C, smoking hot) – How to cook tall pancakes without a steamer – A McDonald’s-inspired maple glaze upgrade (with a chef twist)
If you’ve ever struggled with soggy pancakes, flat pancakes, or pancakes that only look good for 30 seconds… this method changes everything. This is the pancake recipe we actually make at home.
RECIPE *Salted maple glaze* 1. 100g Butter 2. 60g Maple Syrup 3. Soy sauce (to taste)
*Pancakes* 1. 240g egg whites (from 8 large eggs) 2. 20g lemon juice 3. 100g caster sugar 4. 20g Corn Flour 5. 100g egg yolks (from 5 large eggs) 6. 140g 00 flour 7. 4g salt 8. 50g whole milk
*To Finish* A disc of salted butter
*Maple Butter Glaze* 1. To make the beurre noisette, heat the butter, swirling the pan regularly until the solids become a very dark golden. 2. Pass the butter through a cloth and fine sieve to remove the solids 3. Allow to cool to room temperature and emulsify with the maple syrup using a stick blender 4. If the glaze starts to solidify, gently reheat and re-emulsify with the stick blender. 5. To make the beurre noisette, heat the butter, swirling the pan regularly until the solids become a very black. 6. Pass the butter through a cloth and fine sieve to remove the solids and allow to cool until it resolidifies 7. In a separate pan, reduce the maple syrup on a medium heat until it has reduced by half and set aside to cool 8. Add the soy sauce to the cooled maple reduction and using a stick blender or whisk, gradually emulsify with the beurre noir 9. Keep at room temperature
*Pancakes* 1. Whisk the egg whites and lemon juice to 60% peaks 2. Gradually add the sugar and whisk to 80% peaks 3. Whisk in the corn flour to combine 4. Add the egg yolks and whisk to combine 5. Very gently fold in the flour and salt 6. Finally fold in the milk
*Cooking the Pancakes* 1. Heat a small non stick egg pan on low 2. Melt a knob of butter in the pan and wipe the pan with some kitchen paper to remove any excess butter. 3. Ladle in 200g of pancake butter and cover(about 3 ladles) 4. Cook for around 5 minutes until the edges of the pancake come away from the sides of the pan and self support 5. Gently flip the pancake (the underside should be golden) and cook the other side for around a minute (no need to colour as much as the other side or the pancake will dry out 6. Wrap the pancakes loosely in parchment paper, ready to steam.
*Finishing the pancakes (optional)* 1. Place the pancake, still wrapped in parchment into a steamer fand cover for 4 minutes. 2. Carefully unwrap the pancake, place on a rack and pipe or spoon over the maple butter 3. Serve with a disc of salted butter
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Video Summary
AI Generated
This Michelin-inspired pancake recipe replaces traditional chemical leaveners with a stabilized meringue base to ensure lasting fluffiness. The dish is elevated by a unique \"black butter\" maple glaze infused with soy sauce for umami, and a \"low and slow\" cooking technique that results in a texture similar to a dense soufflé.
Everybody thinks they've got the best pancake recipe.
My experience, they're normally fluffy at the beginning,
but then they often get soggy over time.
This is a Michelin-inspired recipe
that eliminates all those problems
and gives you the lightest, fluffiest pancakes
without question.
Okay, so one of the most requested recipes on the channel,
and also, I will say, probably one of the things
I actually make the most at home.
So this is my ultimate pancake recipe.
I used to make buttermilk pancakes for my kids
every weekend until I found this method.
And the reason I found it is
because I went to a restaurant for breakfast
and it was probably one of the best experiences of my life.
The restaurant is called Pavilion
and it's in one of the most affluent areas in London,
but they have nailed breakfast.
There is no better place to go for breakfast
other than Fallow.
And we've kind of been playing around with it for a while
to make it the best pancake recipe we could possibly do,
as well as trying pancakes from the Golden Diner as well,
which is kind of the most viral one in New York.
And this is what we've come up with.
So it's an at-home version
of a Michelin-star pancake recipe.
And I'm trying to say, I'm absolutely chuffed with it.
And one of the main problems that we get with pancakes,
they're really great when you cook them straight away
and like, you know, they're beautifully fresh.
But within, you know, minutes,
they typically lose a lot of fluffiness
and a lot of lightness.
There's a couple of techniques and methods in this recipe
that helps to sort of secure structural integrity
of the pancake.
Eight cold egg whites in a bowl.
Lemon juice.
So we are whisking up these egg whites with lemon juice.
The acid inside the lemon juice basically stabilizes
and makes it more voluminous.
So same way like an acid in a sourdough
sort of helps to add structure and sort of stability
to the gluten proteins,
it's exactly the same with lemon juice and egg white.
Sometimes we can over-whip a meringue
or a French meringue base.
Lemon juice actually elongates the time
that you can whip it for
without it kind of splitting and collapsing.
Might as well say, this is one of the techniques
that I learned from a really good old school show
by Raymond Blanc.
We always see people whisking like this,
but it makes your arms tired really quickly.
So if you want to sort of,
if you know you've got,
you're sort of strapping in to do some long whisking jobs,
hold your whisk like this,
and then basically just let the whisk go back and forward.
And you'll basically be able to whisk
for 10 times longer than you would normally.
I'm going to do this, unbelievably,
as a sacrifice to you guys at home, by hand.
I would normally use an electric mixer,
but my producer said it's not accessible.
Don't know who doesn't have a KitchenAid out there,
but apparently that's a thing.
All right, so that's been whisking
for around about eight minutes.
This is what we call, you know, soft peaks.
It's not really stiff,
but it kind of doesn't move around
when you wiggle it around.
We're going to add our sugar.
We've got some caster sugar in here.
So add half the sugar, whisk it for a little bit of time,
and then add the rest.
Now then, this mix,
without sort of being stabilised in some way,
just would completely,
to be honest, it would completely deflate.
So the way that you stabilise that,
and this is quite common sometimes with meringues as well,
is by using a little bit of cornstarch.
So cornstarch goes in,
and then continue to whisk until we have nice, firm peaks.
Perfect example of a stiff peak.
It should hold its shape perfectly.
But what you'll see from this
is all of this effort is being put
to make these pancakes as fluffy as possible,
and also to hold that level of fluff.
So I've got this really, really beautiful light mix.
It's nice and stable.
Now we're going to add our egg yolks to the mix.
So five egg yolks go in,
and it's important to mention,
this is obviously going to have an impact
on the sort of the integrity of the mix.
It just will make it a little bit looser,
but it's also going to add a lot of richness
to the mix at the same time.
Okay, nice.
So we've just folded in the egg yolks,
and now I'm going to put in some salt.
Lightly folding it.
So you've just worked so hard
to put all that air in there.
Just be really gentle with this stage.
The origins of pancakes are pretty much like ancient.
We've been making things,
we've been making pancakes for thousands of years,
but the main change came with the sort of invention
and the use of bicarb, which was, you know,
an American thing.
So the buttermilk pancakes that we get today
always use bicarb and baking powder.
The thing about this recipe and why it's so unique
is there's obviously none of that in there,
but this mix is incredibly, you know,
a bit more laborious to make.
Turning this mix over,
we want to work to get all of that flour
incorporated in there,
whilst keeping as much sort of natural air
that we've already incorporated into that mix.
And then just as you've incorporated all of that in there,
just add a touch of milk.
Now it's almost too fluffy at this stage
to make a really nice connection with the pan,
so the milk just helps sort of let it down a little bit.
You should have this beautiful sort of voluminous,
like very shiny cake mix.
Just before that starts cooking,
I'm going to get on and make a really beautiful
sort of glaze.
Personally, this is just my favorite way
to make a maple glaze.
What we're going to do with this
is we're going to take it past beurre noisette.
So we're going to go to a, it's called a beurre noir,
so it's literally black butter.
You're going to be nervous doing this at home.
If you're not nervous,
you won't have taken it far enough.
It needs to absolutely smoke.
And then what we're going to do
is incorporate lots of reduced maple syrup in there.
Maple naturally is reduced
from like 100 liters down to this anyway.
All we're actually doing is just sort of carrying on
with the natural sort of reduction anyway.
It basically makes something,
I hate to admit this, it's going to be so bad,
but I'm in love with the McDonald's maple syrup.
So, so good.
I don't know what they put in there.
I think it's like corn, some nasty ----,
but it's the perfect consistency for pancakes.
So this is McDonald-inspired maple glaze.
Doing this, this can reduce on a medium heat,
especially your brown butter.
Never put it too high because it starts to foam.
So we used to create liters of this in the restaurants
and you'd always see when a commie was doing it
because they'd overfill the pan and then it'd foam out.
So at this stage, it's quite an important part
of the butter sort of caramelization process,
but just turn it right down.
I mean, I don't think there is a better smell on earth,
unsurprisingly for our channel than caramelizing butter.
It just smells so, so, so good.
So brown butter normally comes at about 140 degrees.
Black butter is more in the region of 190 degrees.
So it is super, super hot and it will be smoking.
And if it's not, then it's not dark enough.
Like look at it right now.
That is, I would say that would be like, you know,
most people would be like, ----, that's burnt.
Well, it's only just starting the process
of turning it into black butter.
So maple syrup wise, that's looking nice.
Like, I suppose more like a runny honey than a maple syrup.
And at that point, I'm going to add our secret ingredient
to this whole process, which just turns it
into this incredibly intense, umami rich, sweet, sweet bomb.
So we've just turned the heat off on that maple syrup.
Now we're going to add in our liquid,
which is some light soy sauce.
So the soy is a really clever, clever thing in this
because it's actually the liquid element.
And to add sort of really hot fat
to a liquid like maple syrup,
it's not naturally going to emulsify.
All these emulsions tend to need some liquid
to emulsify into.
Soy gives you that liquid,
but it also gives this intense umami hit at the same time.
Whoever's doing the washing up is not very happy
because the pan tends to get a little bit sticky
on the bottom, but just give it a little soak.
But this is it.
Now, this is a critical point.
Most people would take this off.
This is where you've got to just trust, trust the process.
It's, you can still see the bottom of the pan
and it's a very sort of opaque, dark, dark, dark brown colour.
You've just got to take it just that little bit further
until it starts to smoke,
then take it off because it'll continue to caramelise
and get darker.
Okay, there we have it.
It's smoking.
It's very dark.
That is beurre noir.
And then just pass off your,
your brown butter into another container.
And then even whilst it's still warm,
we're just going to whisk that into our maple syrup.
Kind of emulsifies nicely
straight into that maple syrup straight away.
What you want to do is just keep this kind of
moving a little bit
because naturally it will start to separate a little bit.
That's finished.
That'll sit there quite happily whilst we make our pancakes.
The recipe originally calls for a steamer,
but we've tried to play around with it
because I know you're not going to be steaming these at home.
A nice non-stick pan.
Non-stick pan is really important.
This is almost brand new.
It's like, it's been used about four or five times.
So I'm going to use this.
And because it's brand new,
there's almost no need to oil or grease it.
What you will get,
and typically when everyone cooks their first pancake,
it's always just generally just a little bit fucked up.
So the second one's always way better.
Put in our first bit of mix.
So you want to move fairly quickly whilst putting the mix in
because it's going to start,
the process is going to start cooking straight away.
And what I'm going to do,
the way I'm putting the dough, the mix into the pan,
it's kind of mimicking how I want it to set.
So I don't want to flatten it
all the way to the sides of the pan.
And then my little hack,
which kind of mitigates the need to use a steamer,
is just to put this little plate or bowl on,
something that fits over the top.
It's on a quite a low setting.
We want to keep checking it regularly
to make sure it's not cooking too quickly.
And you can kind of tell that
from how much it's browning around the outside.
The heat is on the lowest setting it can possibly go.
So don't worry,
it's already got all of the air in there.
Normally, when you're cooking pancakes,
you need a level of heat
to make the bicarbonate baking powder sort of react,
and then you get the lift.
It's the opposite way around
because this has already got the air in there.
It's a low slope,
basically caramelization process until you're happy.
And you need to make sure
that the top is set nicely as well.
So this is the golden rule,
is basically low and slow with these ones.
Okay, so I've just taken the lid off
just to check how it's cooking.
It's only been about three or four minutes,
but what's really nice to see
is it's starting to set around the outside.
Put that plate back on.
It's kind of a bit of a leap of faith.
But once you've done one,
you'll know the time for the next one.
We're nearly getting to flippage territory.
And you can see it's kind of starting to come up and rise.
So now this is the moment of truth.
So we're just going to take our Maurice,
just release it around the outside.
Your wife's affection
and your kid's breakfast hangs in the balance.
You ready?
One, two, three, flip.
Oh, so close.
Right, that's the one that I'll eat then.
But to be honest, it still looks pretty damn good.
Plate goes back on.
We're going to finish that cooking
for around about five or six minutes.
Obviously important to mention,
if you have a pan lid,
that would work better than a bowl.
But this pan didn't come with a lid.
It doesn't need a huge amount of time on the other side.
You haven't seen anything as beautiful as that.
Whilst we cook the other one,
we're just going to let that cool on a wire rack.
Just got some nice cold butter,
nice bit of salt on there.
And then I'm just going to take out that last pancake.
That's ******* beautiful.
Whack that on top.
Oh my God, look at those bad boys.
And then do not shy away on the glaze.
This is probably the nicest thing you could ever do
for a family member.
Make these sexy little pancakes.
To test out these pancakes,
I've got two very special guests.
The boys from Jolly are going to come and verify
if we nailed it.
I mean, it looks good.
It really does.
Looks like a couple of berets with some butter on top.
Wow.
Well, it's more dense than I was expecting.
It's dense and light at the same time.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's really throwing me.
Incredibly Moorish, isn't it?
Worth the work.
Worth the effort.
How long did this take you?
Yeah, that's the question.
Solid 20 minute wish.
Okay, by hand.
20 minutes, okay.
So if it was me, it would be five hours.
The kitchen would be utterly destroyed.
And then it would look nothing like this.
Certainly wouldn't taste like it.
You've tried a few of our recipes before.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I'm a sucker for punishment.
It's like a dense souffle.
Yeah, it's more like a souffle than a pancake.
So you're going to try this this weekend, right?
Yeah, I will.
I'll send you a picture.
I'll wait for that.
Can't wait.
Delicious.
Awesome, cheers guys.
Thanks for coming in.
That was amazing.
Thanks, guys.
I'm just going to have one last little bit.
Come on.
All right, I'll just take that with me.
Want some buns, then?
Mm.
