Chefs Pierre Magnolini, Shilpa Uskokovic, and Neil Kleinberg are used to thinking outside the box when it comes to cooking; however, today on Epicurious we’ve asked them to give us their unfiltered, honest reviews of some prominent pancake mixes found on supermarket shelves. Which pancakes pack the most bang for your budget, and which should you avoid at all costs?
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00:00We've gathered three professional chefs to blind taste test every pancake mix
00:04we could get our hands on to see which ones meet their standards.
00:12All of the pancakes have been prepared following the cooking instructions in the
00:14back of their packaging. Natural variants may occur.
00:19Betty Crooker, Bisquick Original Pancake and Baking Mix.
00:23They have a nice color. They're already sugar inside. I can smell it.
00:26Love the little dip in the center, what I think of like as a waste of a pancake.
00:30There's no heat that really touches the side. It dips in slightly because of that lack of heat.
00:35It tells me that the pancake has enough strength to rise enough.
00:38I love it.
00:38What I'm looking for in a pancake is something fluffy and tender.
00:42We want a balanced flavor.
00:43Not too sweet and not too bland.
00:45Neutral enough to take the maple syrup.
00:47I love a pancake that has crispy edges.
00:50You want texture and that little ring is good.
00:52You want to make sure your pancake has enough moisture in it.
00:55And if it has the acidic tang of something like buttermilk or sour cream, that's an added bonus for me.
01:02This tastes kind of flat.
01:03It's actually less sweet than I thought.
01:05There's a slight bitterness towards the end of this.
01:07It's fluffy and it's tender, but it's a bit dry.
01:12It feels a little dense. It feels a little sticky.
01:14Really admirable rise.
01:16Height in a pancake is usually in relation to how much leavener there is and the correct balance of them.
01:22Generally, a thicker batter will rise more and a thinner batter will kind of spread out.
01:26Bisquick, maybe?
01:28Oh, bisquick.
01:29Oh, no way.
01:30It says pancake and baking mix.
01:31Two cups of the mix, one cup of milk, two tablespoons of vegetable oil and two eggs.
01:37The fact that we only add two tablespoons of oil might go towards explaining why this feels quite lean to me.
01:45There's a lot of starch inside, cornstarch, flour. This is very dense.
01:50Usually in ingredient labels, ingredients are listed by the weight or volume in a descending order.
01:55The sugar and salt are towards the end. It means there's very little.
01:58So I think that kind of translates into why the pancakes taste pretty flat to me.
02:01They look a little flat. There's holes in them. The holes are usually coming from
02:12the flour or the dry ingredients not mixed properly and dissolving enough into the wet.
02:18These are a bit thinner than the previous ones.
02:22You don't have enough fat and so then you're not getting that nice golden crispy ring on the outside.
02:27You see how there's no waste in this one? It tells me that the pancake batter was probably a bit thinner
02:33than the previous one. That little stretch and pull. I think this is going to taste a bit gummy,
02:39but let's find out. Oh!
02:43Strange texture, very stretchy, not fluffy enough, not tender enough.
02:48It's way more sweet.
02:49The flour has been cut with something else. I'd be curious if there was like some kind of starches.
02:54This quick shake and pour. Oh God, what did our world come to?
02:58Yeah, that's why.
02:59Shake and pour. What are revolutionary concepts?
03:02Just add water.
03:03So if you take all of these dehydrated dry ingredients and you just add water to it,
03:08it's going to taste like a sponge. Chewy and dense.
03:11The sugar and the dextrose. This is why this is more sweet.
03:16Defatted soy flour. Oh, that kind of explains the gumminess a little bit.
03:20Usually soy flour is added as a tenderizer. It also makes a batter a bit more viscous and it helps
03:27to trap air a bit better. Oh yes, there's datum in there.
03:31Datum. It's essentially like a fatty acid or an emulsifier and it's used to just bring and keep
03:37all the ingredients together in a way. It's structuring the batter while it's cooking it.
03:42It can replace the eggs. Might as well have just added the water to this,
03:46put it out in a squeeze bottle and then made like glue.
03:52Trader Joe's. Buttermilk pancake and baking mix.
03:55They seem a little dense. They don't seem fluffy like they're springing back.
03:59You can hear the cut. It's like I'm sawing through something. It's dry.
04:05These taste much drier than the other two.
04:07I'm sorry, there's actually pancakes stuck in my throat.
04:10The thing about like batters like this that you shouldn't over mix it. If you keep mixing it
04:14and keep tinkering with it, that flour and the dry ingredients, they get stretchy. They get tough.
04:20Do you see the crumbs just from cutting it? It feels fluffy like a sponge, you know,
04:25like a dish sponge. You would need a lot of maple syrup to kind of moisten this one.
04:29It's very dry. It's very bland.
04:31Trader Joe's.
04:32Trader Joe's.
04:33Oh, Trader Joe's.
04:36I guessed.
04:37You did me dirty.
04:38I guess you're not that good at making pancakes.
04:41I don't taste much buttermilk in this.
04:42I haven't found yet a buttermilk powder that replicates the richness
04:47and lactic tang of liquid buttermilk.
04:49Buttermilk dehydrated is really taking out all the fat
04:53and the tang of what buttermilk is supposed to do and be.
04:57Jiffy buttermilk pancake and waffle mix.
05:01The crust and the edges and the color is very nice.
05:04A little brown and caramelized.
05:06There's a faint whiff of maple for some reason.
05:10Now you're talking.
05:11Flavor is nice.
05:12Certainly balanced between salt and sugar.
05:14They feel a little lighter.
05:16They're not as dense in the middle.
05:17You can see the crumbs on my plate here,
05:19which indicates that it's reasonably dry.
05:21It's nice.
05:22These are, I think, the best out of anything I've tasted today.
05:25Jiffy buttermilk pancake and waffle.
05:29The picture on the box is beautiful.
05:31The first thing that jumps out at me, it says lard in it.
05:34And that's what makes it flavorful.
05:36Cornstarch is good too.
05:37Cornstarch makes things crispy.
05:39The soy flour, but it also has wheat starch.
05:42Both tenderizing products that reduce the gluten, overall gluten content.
05:47Maltodextrin, corn syrup, plus regular sugar in seconds.
05:51So this is very high sugar.
05:53Natural and artificial flavors.
05:54They've put maple syrup in here.
05:57That's what I'm tasting in the batter, I think, is that maple flavor,
06:00which is like a sweetener, but it also tenderizes like sugar.
06:05It caramelizes and it breaks down the gluten in the flour.
06:10Power Milling Company, original pancake and waffle mix.
06:14Nice edge, crispiness.
06:17I actually like the look of these.
06:19They feel very homemade to me in a way.
06:22There's something promising about them.
06:24I have a feeling these are going to be tender, but also a bit moist.
06:31This one is very nice.
06:32It's very fluffy and very tender, but it's still a bit drier than I would like.
06:37It doesn't feel as chemical.
06:39I would say it's feeling more fresh.
06:40There is some kind of odd aftertaste.
06:43Some sort of like citrus peel or lemony.
06:46Right now it's my favorite.
06:49Pearl Milling Company, original pancake and waffle mix.
06:53America's favorite pancake brand.
06:55Pearl Milling?
06:56I don't know that one.
06:57Listen, I'm no one to argue with America right here.
06:59So I see on this recipe it says to add milk.
07:02Some box mixes will ask you to reconstitute with water.
07:05Milk has a bit more fat and it has protein and it has sugars in it,
07:11which help to tenderize a pancake and also help with the browning.
07:18Hungry Jack, original pancake and waffle mix.
07:21This looks good.
07:22Looks fluffy.
07:23The color is nice.
07:24I can see that they have a nice even crumb.
07:27No sign of gumminess.
07:29They are tender.
07:30They are moist.
07:31It's nice.
07:32I would say this one and the other one are very close.
07:35They're very tender.
07:36The syrup is soaking well enough.
07:39They taste like they might have a bit of fat in the dough.
07:43Oil is going to give it moistness and tenderness.
07:46Probably has eggs as well because it's very yellow all around.
07:51It has a nice balanced flavor.
07:53It has the crispy edges.
07:54I feel like this is something I would get at a diner.
07:57Hungry Jack.
07:58Hungry Jack.
07:59Hungry Jack.
08:01What?
08:01Wait, for real?
08:02Shut up.
08:03I said hungry.
08:04Start it.
08:05That's wild.
08:06It says bleached wheat flour, but the other one, it was unreached.
08:10Wheat flour, it just has more flavor.
08:12Very nice instructions for pancakes a bit above the rest.
08:16Let your prepped mix stand for three minutes.
08:19That helps hydrate the flowers a bit more evenly and it could also translate into a loftier rise.
08:25A perfectly serviceable pancake and I would say if somebody asked me now which one I would pick of
08:31the ones that I've tasted so far, this is the one I would pick.
08:33Go Jack.
08:37Dolly Parton's buttermilk pancakes.
08:38They're little and perfect and very cute.
08:41They have that crispy edge.
08:42It's kind of pilling in a way.
08:44Like you know when you have a cashmere sweater and it creates those little pills?
08:47It kind of has that same texture when I cut it.
08:49So I think it might be a bit gummy.
08:51Like it's pulling.
08:52It's almost like stretching like pizza dough.
08:56A little tough, a little dry.
08:57It's getting like a paste in your mouth.
08:59Not very pleasant texture, I would say.
09:02I don't think the flavor is so good here.
09:03It feels really bland.
09:05There's a lack of salt in it which makes the sweetness stand out a bit more.
09:08Bed Bath & Beyond.
09:11Really?
09:12Barry Manilow.
09:13Oh, Dolly Parton.
09:15I love her.
09:16Whose idea was to put Dolly's name on a pancake mix?
09:18There's dehydrated eggs and dehydrated buttermilk.
09:21So this is a complete mix which means you just add water.
09:24I hope you're using good quality water.
09:27From the pancakes I've tasted thus far,
09:30those that have been reconstituted with just water
09:33have proven to be gummier than the rest.
09:36I think maybe even something as little as balancing the salt and sugar a bit more
09:40would have helped a lot.
09:42It's not worth it.
09:43I'm sorry, even if I like country music.
09:47Crusty's.
09:48Light and fluffy, complete buttermilk pancake mix.
09:51Eh, the color's a little light.
09:53I feel like these don't have a lot of fat in the batter.
09:57I would be curious to see if this is also like a mixed with water kind of situation.
10:02So I'm working too hard to have to cut a wedge out of it.
10:06I can feel that stretchiness and chewiness, that toughness.
10:09Quite hefty, double the size I would say of some of the others that we've tasted.
10:13Smells like bleached flour.
10:14Like if you have a swimming pool, but it's made out of metal, if that makes sense.
10:20It has a chlorine and iron smell.
10:26That's enough for me.
10:26It's puffing, but it's not airy.
10:29It can be that the batter was too thick.
10:31Oh.
10:32Okay.
10:33Crusty's.
10:34Complete pancake mix, just add water.
10:37So first of all, there's no eggs on that one.
10:39Which explains why there's not much richness.
10:41Oil and buttermilk are towards the end of the ingredient list,
10:45which means there's very little of it compared to the rest of the ingredients.
10:48Food starch modified.
10:50Modified starch.
10:52That means it's a starch that can do its job, which is primarily thickening,
10:57without the need for any heat.
10:59It'll activate just by the action of friction or shearing.
11:03The baking soda might be trapped inside and can't really go out,
11:07because there's so much starch that it can't really does its work.
11:11And that's why I think it's so thick and dense.
11:15Annie's organic classic pancake and waffle mix.
11:18I think first glance flat didn't raise at all.
11:21It indicates to me that the batter might be a bit thinner than some of the previous ones.
11:26It could also be a function of the leavening makeup.
11:30Baking powder generally makes things go up where baking soda spreads,
11:34rather than springs up as much.
11:36It looks dry.
11:38Something tastes like artificial or off.
11:41No flavor.
11:42Very bland.
11:43Not fluffy, not tender.
11:44I think it's maybe the leavening on it.
11:46It didn't work that well.
11:48And they do have a little crispy edge, which is good.
11:50But I don't know.
11:51The flavor's not good.
11:52Oh, Annie's.
11:53Baking powder and they have baking soda.
11:55When you combine too much leavening together, it's either going to overpuff or not doing anything.
12:02You can see it puffing in the pan.
12:04It's like, oh, I'm going to have nice and fluffy pink eggs.
12:06And then you put it up and then .
12:07Oh, it says you can make it vegan and swap an egg for a third of a cup of applesauce.
12:12Apples are high in pectin and applesauce has this thickness and viscosity that can act like eggs
12:20and allow air to be trapped within it, which makes it a wonderful substitute.
12:24And this is the one with vegan is applesauce.
12:27And now all of a sudden I could tell immediately when I cut this that this is going to be better.
12:32The one with the applesauce looks fluffier.
12:34I can taste the applesauce in it.
12:38It's still bland, but the applesauce brings a better taste.
12:41The texture of the vegan version is much better than this one.
12:44The eggs added too much leavening.
12:46This is why I think it got flattened.
12:48I think the baking powder and the baking soda work very well without the eggs.
12:51Stonewall kitchen, farmhouse pancake and waffle mix.
12:56These look flat, kind of like a crepe, no crispy edge.
13:00These are different.
13:01They have like a bumpy kind of browning.
13:04When the batter hits the griddle, they're not rising properly.
13:07Either not enough leavening agents in the batter or too heavy other ingredients in it.
13:12This smells like waffles that you get at a self-service hotel breakfast setup.
13:20Dry, a little bit of crispiness.
13:22A pronounced bitterness to this.
13:24It feels like this baking soda that hasn't been balanced by enough acidic ingredients
13:28and has this metallic kind of taste.
13:31Smells like vanilla, tastes like licking a pole.
13:34Sarah Betts.
13:36At Stonewall kitchen, farmhouse pancake and waffle mix.
13:39Boy, is that bad.
13:40Company classic.
13:42Wow, what a posh little name for not very great pancakes.
13:46Enriched wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine, monotrate, riboflavin.
13:52So that's all nutrients added back in because it's bleached flour.
13:56Malted barley extract is like molasses.
13:58It's very sweet.
14:00And on top of that, you still have regular sugar and also artificial flavor.
14:06And here it says mix with whole milk or buttermilk.
14:10And both of those ingredients are kind of different.
14:12Buttermilk would have neutralized the baking soda in this mix.
14:16But if this was made with milk, I fear there wasn't enough acid to neutralize the baking soda.
14:21And that's coming out in this metallic kind of iron pole sort of taste.
14:27Birch Benders.
14:28Organic classic pancake and waffle mix.
14:31These look amateur, like my four-year-old grandson could have done these.
14:35Very chubby pancakes.
14:37They're tough and gluey and really kind of almost raw in the middle, even though I know they're cooked.
14:44It has almost like a yeasted dough pull.
14:47I'm expecting this to be a little bit chewy and tough.
14:51It's a shame about the texture because actually they taste quite good.
14:55There's a nice level of sweetness, a decent amount of salt.
14:59Without any toppings, it's hard to chew.
15:01Yeah.
15:01I pull that out and you can see it's like stretching.
15:04A gluten flour could make an elastic pancake.
15:07Too much starch in the mix or in the batter.
15:10I wonder if it's a slightly leaner mix that doesn't have too much fat,
15:14so then it's activating a lot of the gluten in it.
15:17Birch Benders.
15:19It's a cute name.
15:20Organic tapioca flour.
15:22Okay, the tapioca starch is making it very stretchy and very gluey-like.
15:27Tapioca has this sort of elasticity.
15:30It's hard to use, I would say.
15:34The tapioca fall at the bottom.
15:37So this is something that you have to constantly need to mix.
15:40Wow, okay.
15:42No fat, no eggs, no dairy.
15:45That's all that needs to be said.
15:46We're done here.
15:49Bob's Red Mill.
15:50Organic multi-grain pancake and waffle mix.
15:53I feel like we're in the organic whole wheat section of this segment.
15:58I wonder if it's like a seven grain.
16:00Vegetarian, vegan, no gluten, something like that.
16:02It's very dense.
16:04But there are some darker brown speckles and maybe even some yellow.
16:08So I think there's some kind of grain in this.
16:11God help me if it's quinoa.
16:13You can see that it's very dry by this.
16:16Zero leavening.
16:20This is more dense.
16:21Whole grains, because of the very nature of their makeup,
16:25that is, they still have their husks and all of that is ground down.
16:29They're a lot more heavier.
16:30They're not as starchy as like their white flour counterparts.
16:34It's good for health.
16:36Good for digestion.
16:37It's good for protein.
16:40But it doesn't taste that good.
16:42They need a little bit more liquid usually.
16:44They might need a little bit more leavening.
16:46And counter to your instinct, whole wheat products can sometimes benefit
16:50from being mixed a lot more because you need actually gluten to develop.
16:54Oh yeah, Bob's Red Mill.
16:55Okay.
16:56Multi-grain.
16:57You know what?
16:58I actually love Bob's Red Mill.
17:00Maybe with just whole wheat flour, it might work.
17:04But with the combination of everything, it's not working.
17:06Those flours tend to want to be dense.
17:09If I had to make this at home, I would probably use half a cup of this mix
17:13and half a cup of all-purpose flour.
17:17Good D's Pancake Plus Keto-Friendly Baking Mix.
17:21Wow, very yellow.
17:24A lot of eggs maybe.
17:25Looks like an omelet.
17:26I love the colouring on them.
17:28Okay, this is gluten-free.
17:29As soon as you start to do anything with non-gluten flour, everything falls apart.
17:35Wow, really bad.
17:37I thought it was going to be really good.
17:39Very bland.
17:40There's no gluten in it.
17:41I could tell the texture as soon as I cut it, I knew it crumbled.
17:45And there's no pull or chew, which also leads me to believe that there's no gluten.
17:49Look at that.
17:50It's like really, really dry and crumbly and granular.
17:54I feel like there's almond flour in here.
17:57I got some kind of grittiness to the tooth.
18:00There we go.
18:01Good D's.
18:02There's a lot going on with the branding.
18:04Made with almond flour.
18:05Mixed 24 pancakes.
18:06No sugar, alcohols, or stevia.
18:08That's a good call-out.
18:09Good D's.
18:10Still sweet pancake plus low-carb baking mix.
18:13This is a lot of stuff.
18:13I do like the almond flour in this.
18:15I do taste it now.
18:16It's coming back to me.
18:18The thing about using almond flour is it doesn't absorb
18:21moisture like a regular kind of flour.
18:24There's a lot of eggs in here.
18:26So for one cup of the mix, it calls for three eggs.
18:29In some of the previous ones, it was one egg usually at most.
18:33That's why it's so yellow and tastes like frittata.
18:36It tastes like these ingredients.
18:38And good job, I guess, in making a mix that tastes exactly like your ingredients.
18:46Arrowhead Mills.
18:47Organic gluten-free pancake and waffle mix.
18:51These are stunning.
18:52Lovely pale golden.
18:56Oh, wow.
18:58Weirdly very acidic.
19:00There's a really bad aftertaste.
19:02Maybe some sort of additive or preservative in the flour.
19:06First thing that comes to me is the sugar right away.
19:09It's very sweet.
19:10A little bit of sandiness and texture in the batter.
19:13Like a grain.
19:14It almost has the texture of cornbread.
19:18I would think it's also either a gluten-free or a certain kind of flour.
19:22Jiffy Pop.
19:23Oh, Arrowhead.
19:24I know them.
19:25Arrowhead Mills.
19:26Organic gluten-free.
19:27It's not the worst, honestly.
19:29Rice flour.
19:31That's the grit.
19:32Organic tapioca flour.
19:34That mimics some of the properties of gluten because it's a bit stretchy.
19:38All of that type of flour is not the same size of the grain.
19:42So this is why when you're eating it, you can feel it.
19:45Xanthan gum.
19:46Almost all gluten-free recipes will contain some amount of xanthan gum.
19:50It's kind of like pectin.
19:53They're using jams and jellies to kind of thicken things.
19:56It adds a sort of extensibility and viscosity to the mixture and it can trap air in the same
20:03way that egg whites can.
20:05This is why you can do this, you know.
20:07Otherwise, it would break like a piece of dry bread, you know.
20:13Kodiak Power Cakes.
20:14Flapjack and Waffle Mix.
20:16Nice crispy ring.
20:18It's probably whole grain flour or seven grain flour or something like that because it's very brown.
20:25It tastes very raw.
20:26It's wet almost.
20:28Like, it's fully cooked.
20:29It's not raw.
20:30There's nothing oozing out from the middle of the pancake.
20:33But it's still gummy.
20:34Like, you can ball it up, essentially.
20:37What makes a pancake gummy is putting too many wet ingredients in it or not putting your
20:41ingredients in at the correct time.
20:43You want to do all your dry first, then you want to fold in or incorporate your wet.
20:48Oh, Kodiak.
20:49100% whole grains.
20:50Power Cakes, Flapjack and Waffle Mix.
20:52I love when a pancake is called the Flapjack.
20:55I have no idea what the difference is, but I feel like you need to be wearing a flannel jacket
20:58near somewhere in upstate New York.
21:00Whey protein concentrate as well.
21:02Okay.
21:03I mean, it's high protein because they added a bunch of protein powder.
21:06That doesn't feel very groundbreaking to me.
21:08There's a lot of protein inside, so you're going to eat like one, two pancakes.
21:11It's going to fill it up very fast.
21:13Oat flour was an interesting one that I didn't guess, but it makes a lot of sense.
21:16It behaves in many ways like traditional flour.
21:19It's like soft.
21:20It has a nice balance of like starch, fat, and protein.
21:23Some people would not like it because it's a specific taste, but you for sure have way more flavor,
21:29I would say, inside a whole grain than on a regular flour.
21:35Cracker Barrel, buttermilk baking and pancake mix.
21:38These look really nice.
21:39They look beautiful.
21:40They have like lots of frilly edges, a little defined waist.
21:46I feel like the batter was calibrated just right.
21:48Hairy, bubbly.
21:50The bubbles are almost fossilized in there, which really that's what a pancake is.
21:53I think these are good.
21:57They have a little bit of saltiness, which I like.
21:59It's not too sweet.
22:00The flavor, I think it's well balanced.
22:03These are made with bleached flour.
22:04The process of bleaching the flour changes its structure in a way that it makes for a much
22:09softer, more tender end result.
22:11Moist enough, fluffy enough, the colors, nice flavors are here.
22:15Out of all of the things I've tasted today, these are the least offensive.
22:19This is a pancake that I would be very happy to eat at a diner.
22:22I hope.
22:23No.
22:24Cracker Barrel?
22:25Cracker Barrel.
22:26Bubbies.
22:28Oh, it is Cracker Barrel.
22:30Palm and soybean oil, sorbic acid, aluminum phosphate.
22:34I'm sure that's really good for you.
22:36Palm oil has its own controversies attached to it.
22:39It's not really sustainably harvested, but it is used a lot in food businesses and also cosmetics
22:46just because it's a stable fat.
22:49For something commercial, I'm not surprised by any of the ingredients.
22:52There you have it.
22:53Now, let's see which pancakes our chefs like the most and the least.
22:58My favorite is the Jiffy.
23:00I think it had the most flavor, the best texture, the least amount of additives that would make it
23:07seem artificial.
23:09My favorite pancakes today were pearl milling with the Cracker Barrel.
23:12It was like very in the same scale, very fluffy, very moist and flavorful.
23:17They were all terrible, mind you.
23:19I'm sorry to be that person.
23:20I think Hungry Jack to me was the closest to a homemade version.
23:24It had a nice balance of like sweet and salty.
23:27It felt neutral enough to be able to take maple syrup and butter.
23:30It was fluffy without being dry and cottony.
23:33My least favorite on the pancakes were the good D's.
23:36They were gluten-free, flavor-free.
23:38The one made with almond flour and lots of eggs.
23:41They were crumbly and had a weird aftertaste.
23:44It was too eggy.
23:45It was gritty and not at all what I expected from a pancake.
23:48My least favorite was Bob's Red Mill.
23:50There was too many flours added inside.
23:53The flavor were not here and it was not fluffy at all.
23:55This is a big feat.
23:57Trying 16 pancakes in I don't know how many hours.
24:00If you are making pancakes from a box mix, you don't have to be beholden to the instructions on
24:05the back of the box.
24:06You could add richer ingredients like milk or eggs or sour cream and you could cook it in a little bit of fat
24:11to have a much more flavorful end result.
24:14Don't get tricked by one you can buy.
24:17If you can make your own, go for it.
24:19The best ones are the ones that are made from scratch.
24:23I can't believe I raw dog these pancakes without maple syrup.