Super sweet, chocolate chip pancakes not your thing? All the more reason to get familiar with savory pancakes—we guarantee they'll pull through during those last-minute weeknight dinners. But before you whip out your pan, you'll need to decide which kind to make (and there are lots of 'em). Let this be your inspiration and your guide.
As with any pancake, you'll need flour (it doesn't have to be wheat), water, and eggs or oil to bind. Most will firm up right on your skillet and take between 10 and 25 minutes to prep and cook, depending on how wild you want to get with toppings and fillings.
Chickpea Flour
Chickpea flour pancakes—also called socca, cecina, and farinata—are local favorites in France's Provence region and in nearby Liguria, Italy. They're also a favorite among chefs for their mellow, nutty flavor—and for the fact that the flour just happens to be gluten-free.
At Terrine in Los Angeles, chef Kris Morningstar makes a socca with rosemary, fennel seed, and parsley. He recommends you stick to a mixture of four parts chickpea flour to five parts water, bound with olive oil and without egg. Put the mixture through a blender to prevent any potential clumping and let it sit out for about an hour or two so that the flour can fully hydrate. After that, it takes all of three minutes to flop that batter onto a nonstick or cast-iron pan and crisp it up on the stove.
If you're making a slightly puffier farinata like the one chef Vinny Campos makes at Ligurian restaurant Fitzcarraldo in Brooklyn, there are a few tips to bear in mind. First, make sure you have your ratios right: Use two cups of flour to about three-and-a-quarter cups of water so that the farinata gets crispy on top but remains cakey in the center. Next, let the chickpea flour sit and settle before you add it to the pan. Skim any developing foam off the top so that the batter remains well-incorporated, Campos says. Lastly, don't skimp on the olive oil, "because you essentially want to fry the batter." You'll want to add enough batter to coat the bottom of the pan. Start with the oil at room temperature (so you don't burn the farinata in the pan). Then gradually turn up the heat. "You want to recreate a wood-fire-oven environment," Campo says. "After the stove, I think the best way to do that at home is to set a broiler to the highest setting for about 15 minutes."
Cornmeal and Beyond
Then there's corn. Pokito in Williamsburg has earned a following for its twist-on-a-flapjack brunch staple: a sweet-potato-cornmeal pancake served atop a sweet soy glaze and alongside mandarin-orange honey and whipped cream. Chef Andres Duran roasts a yam, peels it, and mixes chunks into the wheat flour-and-cornmeal mix to add moisture and keep the pancakes crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside. The dry-to-wet ratio you'll want is 2:1, because the cornmeal absorbs heaps of moisture.
Start With the Pancakes You Know
Nobody does savory pancake fillings the way State Bird Provisions (our best new restaurant of 2012) does—there's an entire section of the menu dedicated to pancakes and toast. The showstopper, according to chef Stuart Brioza, is the sourdough pancake with sauerkraut, pecorino, and ricotta mixed in. "Savory pancakes are our favorite, and around the world you get so many great ones: French crepes, Korean-style kimchi pancakes, Chinese scallion pancakes," he says. "It's a nice starchy alternative to bread that you can be really creative with."
The batters are essentially what you would make for sweet pancakes, but when it comes to mix-ins, the sky's the limit. For that sauerkraut-pecorino pancake, he chops the cheese up into large chunks so it oozes when cooked. Another favorite has Brioza adding ginger, scallions, sambal, tamari, and sesame oil to pancakes before topping that off with sea urchin. He also makes "the ultimate grilled cheese pancake," with loads of cheddar, heirloom tomatoes, and black pepper.
"As You Like It"
For something completely different, attempt okonomiyaki, Japanese for "as you like it." This savory pancake is a comfort-food staple in Japanese kitchens akin to mac and cheese in the U.S. It's made from flour, egg, lots of finely chopped cabbage, and dashi. Chef Vincent Minchelli at Okiway in Brooklyn recommends buying dashi powder to flavor the batter (rather than spending loads of time making it at home). Traditionally, Japanese cooks mix shrimp, squid, or pork belly into their okonomiyaki.
Michelli's partial to making the mixture 20- to 40-percent cabbage combined with egg and flour before adding in kimchi, chorizo, and ramen or soba noodles. Then he tops it off with with some sort of mayo (like Japan's favorite Kewpie brand), seaweed (nori), and bonito flakes. The great thing about okonomiyaki is that it's an empty slate: The most popular variation at the restaurant is Mexican-inspired and served with chipotle mayo and cilantro crema.
A few tips from Michelli: Don't agitate the batter too much as it's cooking; you want the cabbage to bind. Let the whole mixture sit in a cast-iron pan with lots of oil for five to eight minutes on each side. You can cover the pan to steam the cabbage faster. But all in all, "It's hard to mess up," he says.
The easiest way to take your pancakes from sweet to savory is to switch up the toppings. Brioza serves a yeasted pancake with beef tongue and a smear of bone marrow, as if the pancakes were toast. At Gardner in Austin, chef Andrew Wiseheart changes the toppings on the panisse (a fried chickpea flour cake) every season to keep things interesting. The most recent panisse was paired with young lettuces, green garlic, and basil, while the summer version featured a peach mostarda topping, pickled ramps, and purslane.
But the most important thing to bring to a savory pancake, Wiseheart says, is an open mind: "How can I take a recipe I find online and tweak it to make it my own?" The panisse at Gardner is "easy to overthink," but is also simple to make and provides a great blank canvas for experimentation: "Could you fold in sautéed spring onions? Could you dust them in rice flour and fry that? Think outside the box and have fun with it."