One of my most vivid memories of camping with the Boy Scouts is eating pancakes. Without fail, the pancakes were always very thick, burnt on the outside, and gooey on the inside. As I’m somewhat of a breakfast food connoisseur, this was quite alarming to me.
The pancake problem can be traced to two separate issues: the batter was too thick and the heat was too high.
Why is the batter too thick? The cook is used to seeing fluffy pancakes pop out on the other side, and don’t realize that the raw materials look much different.
Why is the heat too high? The cook has a lot of mouths to feed and a limited number of stoves, pots, and pans. They want to get the pancakes quickly as humanly possible. In addition, they’ve got a day full of activities they want to get to. High heat is a way of cutting corners.
A lot of companies today are creating burnt, gooey pancakes. They release products with obvious flaws and expect them to be overnight successes. It doesn’t work that way. Good pancakes are cooked with the right consistency batter and at a low heat for a longer amount of time.
Pancakes
