People Wait 3 Hours for NYC's Best Pancakes

[upbeat music]

Hey guys, my name is Sam Yoo.

I'm the chef/owner of Golden Diner here in New York City.

We are here today to make

what I think is the best version of pancakes.

Golden Diner is an Asian American diner

located in Chinatown Manhattan.

When we first opened, we were nominated

for best new restaurant in the country

by the James Beard Awards.

Also Food & Wine best new restaurant.

The wait can balloon up to three, three and a half hours.

Every table pretty much gets a pancake.

First thing we're gonna do is make the batter.

To start, we're gonna get our wet together

and bloom out the yeast.

We're gonna take 60 grams of water,

buttermilk, primarily for flavor,

acidity to help with the balance of all these heavy flavors.

And also 'cause it's classic.

The yeast helps form the air pockets in the pancake,

adds like sour acidity,

and it acts as a leavening agent,

will just make it feel lighter and fluffier.

Mix this first part of flour,

and this is sort of like a polish when you're making bread,

and so we're gonna let this sit and ferment first.

I don't have to go too crazy

to try to get all these lumps out.

Sort of looks like cottage cheese,

but this is where I would stop,

because I don't wanna overwork it,

'cause then you're gonna have more of a gummy texture.

You do want to cover this up

so there's no skin that forms on top of the batter.

This is one way to incorporate more flavor,

like the yeast, the the flour, the the water.

Start to develop that sort of like

sour bread flavored notes here.

I'm just gonna put it in a warm place.

Not too hot 'cause I don't want to kill the yeast.

A warm environment helps the yeasts activate more.

And let this chill for about an hour so it proofs.

Start with the dry AP flour.

Salt, and it's important to add the salt here

because salt can potentially kill yeast.

Sugar, we want the pancake to be sweet obviously,

but for my palate, and I think most people's palates,

like you don't want anything to be too cloyingly sweet.

For these extreme light powders,

we weigh them out with a microscale,

which is just more accurate.

So we're gonna get five grams of baking soda here.

Just acts as a leavening agent.

Also to help with the fluffiness of the pancake.

Gonna mix everything together,

make it as homogenous as possible.

Now we'll do our wet mix, two eggs,

vegetable oil because it helps with the even browning.

So all these ingredients you'll see

when you're making a chocolate cake or a birthday cake.

Pancakes are essentially cakes.

We really want it to emulate like the fluffiness

but also have it just be aesthetically in pancake form.

The way we cook it is gonna be what makes it a pancake.

Here you can see bubbles starting to form.

I could see the yeast actively working. This looks great.

It also feels a little bit warm to the touch on the bottom,

which is another good sign.

I'm gonna mix all this together now.

So I'm gonna mix the wet first.

I wanna work the flour the least.

I don't want to overwork it

'cause you don't want it to be gummy.

You don't see any yellow streaks in there.

I'm gonna add the flour.

When you are mixing it, it's like sort of growing and moving

and you see the bubbles popping.

It's a live thing.

The levity of the bubbles will translate

in terms of the lightness of the pancake.

Again, just gently incorporating, lumps are okay.

When you're getting all like the excess stuff

off your whisk,

just make sure you don't have any dry bits of flour,

'cause that will come out in your final pancake.

The aroma that comes off of this is not what you'll get

in a typical pancake batter due to the yeast.

You're gonna get like a slight sour note

that when you cut a fresh piece of sourdough,

it's not gonna come off as off-putting.

This is good to go.

It'll probably stay for up to two days,

but I'm going to put it aside for now

and just jump into some toppings.

Our maple honey syrup,

I think this is one of the best parts of the dish.

I'm actually gonna use this pot just to measure the butter.

So we're gonna get half pound over here.

This butter, we're just gonna melt it very gently.

I don't want it to brown or get any color on it,

just want it to liquefy.

You could also throw it in the microwave,

and then we'll get to the rest of the ingredients.

Honey, flavor of honey.

I like to think that this sort

of tastes like a Werthers original kind of sauce,

which sort of just happened.

Soy just to add a little bit of salty notes

and also bring a little bit of those base notes

that soy brings to the party.

It has a darker, deeper flavor

and almost can act like a molasses when you add these two.

Maple syrup.

Salt in here is really important

'cause it's gonna help balance out the sweet.

I'm gonna mix this together.

I want it to be just more homogenized, just one color.

We also have some xanthan gum, which you don't really need,

but something that we use to help stabilize the sauce

so it doesn't break where the fat and the water separate.

This is more of a restaurant thing,

just to help things be more consistent.

We have fully liquified butter.

There's no water that's been cooked out of it,

truly just liquified.

And then I'm gonna add our honey-soy mixture

that we've made straight into the pot.

Add a touch of water.

And you see it starting to come together a bit.

It's turning more into one color,

and now you sort of have like one nice sauce.

Finally we're gonna add the xanthan gum.

This stage is really important that you're whisking.

If you don't, you can get clumps of xanthan,

which is really not nice.

But yeah.

When I eat this with a pancake, you get the sour pancake,

this slightly sweet, slightly salty sauce.

It just acts as like a really nice, you know,

bathing agent for our pancakes.

Our honey maple butter here is one of the few toppings

that we put on the dish.

It's the fat of the dish

that makes it so luxurious and delicious.

This is really important, and how we make it is important.

So I'm gonna show you how to do that.

It's a half pound of butter.

I'm gonna do this by hand,

but you could do this in a KitchenAid

and that helps make everything so light and fluffy.

This is tempered butter at room temperature.

It's really malleable, easy to work with,

that will help get the air into the butter.

It's sort of like whipping cream.

One thing that you'll be able to notice is that

the butter itself is actually getting lighter in color.

So this you can see has has more air whipped into it

than that which is a little bit more yellow.

The flavorings in here are very similar to our syrup,

and the butter flavor is also important,

just as butter by itself versus in a wet sauce.

We have one more thing to get ready for our pancakes.

[upbeat music]

So we're making a berry compo right now

with blueberries and strawberries.

We try to keep the strawberries

and the blueberries the same size so they cook evenly.

So essentially we're making blueberries-sized strawberries.

I'm gonna add sugar and cornstarch to help thicken

so it has a nice consistency versus it being just too wet.

And then sugar, you just need a little bit of sugar

just to bring it up a bit.

This here is macerating the berries

where the sugar is gonna start breaking down the cells.

It brings out the oils.

It's almost like marinating a meat in a way.

Once you see it start getting wet and glazey

and not so white and powdery,

that's when it, you know, it's sort of ready.

So we're gonna let this sit, let it chill, do its thing,

and then we're gonna go cook it down.

I don't want to cook this for too long,

I'm just trying to cook it

until the cornstarch cooks out and thickens.

But we still want to maintain a lot

of the freshness from the fruit.

To help prevent that,

I'm also gonna shock the sauce over an ice bath,

which will be here.

When you cook this, it's immediately going to sear

and release more liquid,

but it's also gonna tighten due to the corn starch.

So you could hear that like violent,

and you see this like

very explosive sort of thing happening.

You see the sugar is caramelizing,

and this is gonna be done in like a minute or two.

Everything is sort of starting to turn very saucy,

and now it's limp.

This is where I want to be.

Anytime you're cooking berries,

you want to make sure you're not mashing them.

That's why we cut them so perfectly

and try to make everything in one nice homogenous shape.

Now we got all our components ready.

We're gonna start cooking some pancakes.

[upbeat music]

This is exactly how we make our pancakes at the diner.

When you pour pancakes over a griddle,

they don't have any edges to enclose the pancakes

so they'll just spread out as far as gravity will let them.

Whereas if you cook them in a pan,

they obviously don't have a place to go,

which will allow for more height and body

and also fluffiness.

These pans have been sitting on the planchet

for a good five minutes.

We cook the pancakes over a griddle

because there's even heat distribution, which is important

when you want a beautiful evenly colored pancake.

The sound is also key.

When you're cooking,

you always want to be using all your senses,

not only just your eyes but your ears, your nose, smelling,

because that's how you know it's cooking,

and you know it's not just going into a cold pan,

which is important because you want it to be hot

so the pancake rises as quickly as possible.

You can sort of see the bubbles working,

the edges right here,

that's like a nice beautiful brown color.

And so I'm gonna actually put it to a cooler side

'cause I don't want any more color than that.

Keep that around 30 seconds or so,

and then we're gonna throw them up in the sally.

So this is another part

of why I think our pancakes are great.

We actually never touch the other side of the pancake.

It never sees any direct heat,

so that helps with the fluffy texture.

So this is a salamander,

it's basically a radiant heat that's comes from up top

when you make gratins or mac and cheese.

Anything where you want like that color on top,

that's what this does.

First thing that I check for

for doneness is if you shake it a bit,

you see how there's like that little part

that's like jiggling in a way that seems raw

and probably wet batter.

That's how I know that part's, that's it's not ready.

But eventually I'll just take a little peek

and just make sure that the inside is fully done.

Now that I see some color in the pancakes,

I could gently cut into it to see if it's done.

I can see that there's no raw batter,

so that pretty much is good for me.

I'm just gonna flip it.

That to me is a beautifully golden crisp pancake

that I would cook for anyone that I love.

This is ideally what you want to go for.

I promise you,

just 'cause of all the balancing that we've done,

this is not gonna taste burnt or bitter by the end.

Every order is two.

Berry compote on there.

Now I am just caneling our maple honey butter.

It has a nice shape.

And then finish with our syrup.

And it's important that you add a little more syrup

than one might think is enough,

just 'cause you want both cakes

to be drenched and wet in syrup.

And the most important part I think

that just brightens everything up is the lemon zest

at the end.

We always thought, honey, maple, butter, lemon,

all makes sense together, and we're not shy about it.

So that's it.

This is our honey butter pancakes at Golden Diner.

It's fluffy, it's got a lot of different color,

golden brown pancake, bright red strawberries,

deep dark purple blueberries.

All those color contrasts I think make the dish stand out,

very aesthetically pleasing.

Let's get into it.

[upbeat music]

Awesome.

First thing that hits is that lemony sort of floral zest,

which is just lovely.

And then I get the texture of the berries

and then finally I get like the softness of the pancakes,

which is really just nice.

A restaurant style pancake is achievable,

especially a Golden Diner style pancake.

And I like to think that, you know,

we've achieved one of the best in the world.

[upbeat music]

Yes, absolutely.

You should use pre-mixed box pancake batters.

Food scientists have recipe tested those things for decades,

and there's a reason

why they're so prominent in our culture.

And I use them all the time

when I'm cooking for my nieces and nephews.

I like to zush them up a bit.

When they say just add water, I add milk.

When they say, I don't know, canola,

I'll use sour cream as a fat

or buttermilk or something else.