something that chefs don't admit that often

is that they enjoy being angry.

Like, we like it. It's cathartic.

You get to yell at people, throw spatulas in the dish pit,

talk shit about guests who order eggs over-easy

because, for some reason, I can't do it,

and you think, like, I could, but I can't.

Hi. I'm Jake from Chez Ma Tante and Le Crocodile,

and I'm here to make pancakes.

What makes our pancakes special

is that we fry them in clarified butter.

I'm going to start off by making clarified butter,

which is really, really easy.

All you do is put cold butter in a pan

over, like, medium or medium-high heat

and heat it up to the point

where the milk solids have separated from the fat.

Skim it a little bit.

It gives it a much higher burning point.

And then I'm just going to pour it.

The pancakes also have clarified butter mixed into the batter,

so I'm going to melt our clarified butter.

[ Laughter ]

I'm just going to use my hands, 'cause whatever.

That's clarified butter.

Now we're making the batter.

Going to start off by cracking our eggs.

Another thing that makes this recipe special

is the use of egg yolks.

It makes them a little bit more rich

instead of just using whole eggs.

I'm going to add a couple of egg yolks.

Oh, fuck me.

Right over the garbage can.

♪♪

The original recipe comes from a book called "How America Eats."

It's under the name Bittydick's Pancakes.

We decided we needed some brunch items.

Pancakes are a pretty obvious choice.

I did a little bit of research and ended up

with that Bittydick's recipe that we then changed

to be fluffier and crispier and brighter.

So, I'm going to add lemon zest now.

It's more important that you would think,

the zesting of the lemons in this.

I mean, they add obviously citrus aroma,

but it helps cut all the richness.

I have an ex-girlfriend who hated lemon in pancakes,

so this is, like, a little ode to her.

When we started making our pancakes, she said,

"Just tell me that you didn't put any lemon in it."

And of course, I did.

I actually like to cream my sugar,

which is something that you do when you're making cookies

or cake or anything like that.

I just like to make sure that as I'm incorporating things

that it's very even.

Add my salt also.

Something that I think is really important

is kind of activating your baking powder,

so I activate the baking powder

in the eggs with the salt and the sugar,

and that's what makes them fluffy.

Once I've kind of whisked out all the clumps

in the baking powder,

I'm going to add some milk.

I think we started out making probably 4 quarts of pancakes,

which we would then end up eating

because we didn't sell any.

Then we got busy,

and now we can go through,

like, over 100 quarts of pancake batter in a week.

You can absolutely make it ahead of time.

We make it like a day in advance.

I'm going to start incorporating flour little by little

just to make sure that it's not clumpy.

It is okay, though, to have clumps in your pancake batter.

It's totally fine.

If you whip it too hard, you'll whip out a lot of the air.

So, like, all of the work that the baking powder is doing

will kind of be negated by whisking too hard.

When I used to visit my aunt,

Chez Ma Tante apropos, in San Diego,

we would go to a Mexican diner basically,

and we'd eat pancakes and chili rellenos,

which surprisingly go really well together.

And the pancakes would come out,

and they were, like, black, almost burnt.

So when we set out to make pancakes originally,

the idea was that they would also be, like, almost charred,

which gives them a little bit of,

I think, complexity that people are probably a little nervous

at first, because you kind of want --

Like, everyone wants, like, golden-brown everything,

so I thought that it would be nice

to stir it up a little bit with dark pancakes.

♪♪

I'm going to add some milk.

♪♪

This is looking kind of loose.

I'm going to add a little bit of flour to tighten it up.

They're called pancakes for a reason.

I'm looking for, like, a cake-batter consistency.

You know when you're whisking cream or something,

and it starts to develop peaks?

You'll be able to see traces for a little bit

before it, like, disappears.

That's what you're looking for,

traces of your whisk and then traces of the batter.

I'm adding my butter now,

and you'll notice when you add your butter

that it gets, like, this really nice, like, glossy texture.

It's pretty.

Okay.

Ready to fry pancakes.

So, fortunately, I have

some clarified butter already prepared.

I'm going to put it into our pan.

♪♪

And it's going to seem like a lot of fat.

That's because it is.

Okay. So now I'm smoking hot, which is a little bit too hot.

I'm going to add a little bit more butter.

It's also going to cool down the pan.

That's a nice sound.

It's frying well.

The old gold standard for when to flip a pancake

is when you start to see bubbles going.

I'll take it just a little bit further.

The scary thing about having an ocean of oil like this

in your pancake is flipping them.

And there's no real easy way to go about it.

You're going to probably splash hot butter.

♪♪

You want to be pretty gentle with your pancake

until you're confident that it's cooked,

'cause you could smack a lot of the air out of it.

But when I get closer,

I like to tap it

to make sure that it sounds right.

But also, like, if you tap it, and it starts to sputter --

If there's any, like, pancake batter

that's shooting out to any edges of the pan,

you know that it's not quite cooked yet.

And especially 'cause these are very thick pancakes,

you run the risk of undercooking them.

Part of the reason why I'm, like, not totally worried

about pan temperature when I'm looking for color

is that I can always kind of fry it on the other side again.

I'm going to flip it, actually,

and brown it just a little bit more

even though I already kind of have

a nice, little, like, burnt edge.

Why no toppings?

Because they're unnecessary.

If you make the most ordinary thing excellently,

like, who really cares?

So, I'd say this one is done.

And I'm just going to keep making pancakes.

My mother used to work in restaurants,

and she had lots of friends who were chefs.

So technically, the original recipe is one that you cook

almost without butter in the pan at all,

which is what the fat in the batter does.

It helps to, like, release.

That results in one of those, like, super evenly colored,

flat, but not crispy pancakes.

You'll notice that a fried pancake

develops a super crispy ring around the outside,

which is delicious and perfect, and that's the difference.

Now that we finished the pancakes,

we put more butter on top

and a generous amount of maple syrup.

I'm going to eat all three of these pancakes.

I'm going to take a really big bite.

♪♪

♪♪

Actually, my pancakes are very good.

My favorite part is that they're crunchy and salty.

I'm Jake, again, from Chez Ma Tante and Le Crocodile,

and for the recipe, you can click the link below.

♪♪

♪♪

No, but I have Taurus rising

and a Taurus moon,

so there we go.