Banana Pancakes
When I was a kid, my dad used to make pancakes or waffles every Sunday morning before church. He’d sometimes add in a “secret ingredient” and then make us guess what it was. Sometimes it was finely cut apples or chocolate chips, but the hardest to guess was banana pancakes because bananas seem to bake right into the pancake.
Pancake batter is fairly easy to make, but I’ve always had trouble cooking them until they’re golden brown. I remember when my dad came to visit me in my first out-of-college apartment, I tried making him pancakes for breakfast. However, they turned out black on the outside and just barely cooked on the inside. Guess I had the pan way too hot, lesson learned!
The chef taught me two helpful hints to make properly cooked pancakes:
- If you are greasing your pan, oil is better to use than butter, because butter scalds much more quickly.
- It’s better to cook the pancakes slowly on a medium heat, than to cook them fast on a high heat.
We’ve found that our cast iron pan works really well because it seems to evenly spread out the heat. Once seasoned, you also don’t need to grease it with oil or butter, either. I like to turn it on to just below medium heat (around 4.5 on our stove), and slowly cook the banana pancakes until golden brown.
Learn how to cook perfectly golden brown banana pancakes in a cast iron skillet by following the instructions below. You can even add in some extra chocolate chips, if you’d like. (This recipe was adapted from King Arthur Flour’s Pancakes Gone Wild Recipe.)
