How to make crêpes at home: how to get the most out of your crêpe iron
A few days ago I was talking with Miriam, from the blog El Invitado de Invierno , about some of the products in the store and she told me how happy she was with the crêpe pan since she used it a lot. Listening to the recipes he prepared and how often he used it, he gave me such an illusion that I couldn't do anything other than ask him to tell us about crêpes, and give us some good advice to learn how to get the most out of the pan. I leave you with his post!
Crêpes, filloas, frixuelos, pancakes, blinis... are very old formulas and present in a large part of cultures from Europe to Asia and from Africa to America. And so old that it is not possible to say what its origin is.
What is easier than mixing a liquid, like eggs and milk, with some starch, and then cooking the batter in a skillet or griddle? I imagine primitive men making pancakes on a flat stone heated over a fire... The Greeks already prepared a type of pancake pan. And you know, from Greece to the rest of the world, like democracy.
These cakes, flat like crêpes or raised like blinis, were used to contain other food when cutlery was not used and still fulfill this function in many places. Precisely because of the soft flavor of the dough, crêpes are perfect to combine with all kinds of accompaniments, sweet or savoury.
In the past it was customary to say that you always had to throw away the first crêpe or pancake, because it tended to go bad, sticking to the pan more easily than the following ones. But I think that this is not true if we use a good crepe pan, with an adequate capacity to spread the heat and it is properly heated before adding the first ladle of batter. That's not the thing to throw anything away, man.
That's why I find cast iron skillets to be an especially great tool for making crêpes or pancakes. The thickness of the iron together with its excellent heat conduction characteristics, which produce a very uniform distribution over the entire surface, make them ideal for this type of preparation, especially in the case of crêpes, formed by a very thin layer of dough. and that they are usually made in large format, so we are interested in them curdling correctly on the entire surface. In fact, so much so that there is a special iron pan for crepes , with lower sides, and that is in fact the one I use.
To make perfect crêpes or pancakes, therefore, we only need a good cast-iron skillet and a little care. The key is to give the pan enough time to heat up perfectly and lightly oil it before pouring in the batter. In general it is only necessary to grease the pan, either with butter, oil or by rubbing a piece of bacon, before making the first crêpe, because if the pan is of good quality it will remain sufficiently greased so that nothing sticks to it.
As we have mentioned before, this soft dough is very versatile because it combines with practically everything. I love using crêpes in savory recipes to wrap all kinds of leftovers: roast chicken (add a little sauce and that's it), vegetables, which we can mix with some béchamel; even with some simple slices of cooked ham and cheese we will have a quick and simple dinner, which the little ones will love. Oh, and try to top some ratatouille with a fried egg and wrap it in a crêpe.
As for sweet recipes, all kinds of jams, preserves and sweet creams are perfect.
You will find the basic recipe for making crêpes in the article on the crêpe cake and lemon cream that we have on the blog, a good example of how to use crêpes in sweet preparations. I want to emphasize that once the mixture is prepared, it is very convenient to let it rest for at least half an hour, so that all the flour is well hydrated. It will spread better and be more even.
If we want to use the perfect utensils, apart from the iron frying pan, all we need is the wooden rolling pin to spread the dough well and make it perfectly thin, and the wooden shovel to turn it without tearing it. They are not essential, but they work very well.
Here you have some other succulent examples of crêpes and raised pancakes recipes:
- Salty crêpe and smoked salmon tart
- Classic American and chocolate pancakes
- Blinis with cream cheese and quail eggs
Well, you already have all the wickerwork to make some crêpes or pancakes that in your house are licked up to the elbow. Go ahead, you can.
Recipe for classic American and chocolate pancakes , from The Winter Guest
