Sourdough Pancakes with Maple-Molasses Strawberries
At Little Goat Diner in Chicago, 2011 F&W Best New Chef Stephanie Izard makes fluffy pancakes using sourdough starter and tops them with oat streusel and fruit. Here, we use molasses-steeped strawberries, making a breakfast that’s balanced with sour, sweet, and bitter flavors.
Kimchi Cheese Jeon (Kimchi Cheese Pancake)
In her episode of Chefs at Home, chef Rachel Yang makes her own homemade Napa cabbage kimchi, and then shows how to use kimchi at varying stages of fermentation in a range of dishes. One of her favorites is this irresistible kimchi pancake, in which tangy, lightly spicy kimchi is balanced out by plenty of mozzarella and cheddar cheese.
Candied Sweet Potato Pancakes
“My great-grandmother, who is 102, would always make candied sweet potatoes for Thanksgiving,” says Douglass Williams, a 2020 F&W Best New Chef. “I wanted to try to find a way to use those sweet potatoes the day after.” So Williams came up with these light, fluffy pancakes, flecked with orange zest and studded with crunchy walnuts. The addition of mashed sweet potatoes gives them a beautiful color and keeps them extra moist and tender. Since the potatoes are already sweetened, Williams cuts back the amount of brown sugar in the pancakes and plays up the warming cinnamon and clove. All in all, this quick-fix recipe is the ideal breakfast for the morning after Thanksgiving—or any time you have leftover candied sweet potatoes on hand.
To Upgrade Your Pancakes, Turn on Your Oven
Homemade berry syrup, a buttermilk hack, and a toasty butter trick are just a few of the keys to flapjack fame.
Brown-Butter Pancakes with Sheet Pan Berry Syrup
Food & Wine Cooks contributor Andrea Slonecker channeled her lifelong love of pancakes to take this breakfast basic to a delicious new level. Toasty browned butter infuses the barely-sweet batter, which fries up on the griddle into fluffy, lacy-edged flapjacks. To top it off, her super-fast sheet pan fruit syrup comes together in just minutes; frozen berries burst in the oven, releasing their juices to mingle with caramelly brown sugar and a little bit of lemon for balance. Trust us—one bite and you’ll never reach for a box mix again.
