Pancake Cooking: Dealing with Sticking to Pan

[Humpo]

How do you cook pancakes in a non nonstick pan? I have a Snowpeak Ti pan and have tried to cook pancakes in there and can not do it. I have tried oil, butter and they still stick and burn. Can you cook them in the bush? Im using a gas bottle on low heat.

[Clownfish]

Hmm, it's a bugger with those lightweight aluminium jobbies, I know. Been there, done that. It's kind of a waste of fuel, but if they're still on the lowest setting, try holding the pan above the flame a bit.

The best results I've had, I must admit, have been on car-camping trips where I have the luxury of a small cast-iron frypan.

The other option I usually take is to just hang the presentation, and dish up a mangled mess that at least isn't burnt.

[Son of a Beach]

I often cook pancakes on the plain aluminium Trangia lid frypan. Works great. I just use a bit of butter. Butter does burn easier than most oils, but it doesn't stick as bad when it does burn, and it tastes much better too (burnt or otherwise ).

The lowest setting (Trangia metho) is not hot enough for pancakes, I reckon. I cook 'em with the damper ring on but fully open. This gets a little too hot sometimes, so I just have to hold the pan off the flame for a while in between pancakes (ie, when serving, adding more butter, adding the mixture, etc).

The pancakes cook beautifully, and I've never had sticking problems. But that's just with the shaker-bottle style ones. My main problem is that I usually forget to bring an implement for turning (the Trangy lid doesn't make a very good flipping pan). I usually have to resurrect an empty packet of something from my rubbish collection for this job.

[Humpo]

Someone told me that you can use Teflon paper in your pan. You can get it from BBQ shops. So I will give that a try and get back to you.

[corvus]

You can also use Glad Bake & Cooking Paper which is available from you Supermarket.
c

[norts]

I cook my pancakes(shake style) on a small sheet of aluminum. Its flat so I just use my knife as a spatula. Have to be careful when I put oil on aluminum, run off really easily. I use my kovea stove on as lowest I can get it. Use my billy grips to hold sheet.

Roger

[kramster]

Someone told me that you can use Teflon paper in your pan. You can get it from BBQ shops.

You can also use Glad Bake & Cooking Paper which is available from you Supermarket.

Interesting ideas folks... I am inspired to have to try them (will start with the Glad-Bake option, and upgrade to Teflon paper if required)
I take it you just cut said lining paper to the size of your pan and insert prior to pouring mixture in.

[kramster]

Just had a thought... what if you had 2 sheets of non-stick-stuff.
Immediately before attempting to flip, you could put sheet 2 on top of the "uncooked" side of your pancake, then flip the whole lot over in the fry-pan.
The first layer could then be easily pealed off the cooked side.
When 2nd side is done, just flip it out onto your plate (and you still hopefully have a clean frying pan).

Would save fiddling round with trying to peal off a half cooked pancake from a bit of baking paper (which I'm sure would curl up and try to annoy you).

[corvus]

Someone told me that you can use Teflon paper in your pan. You can get it from BBQ shops.

You can also use Glad Bake & Cooking Paper which is available from you Supermarket.

Interesting ideas folks... I am inspired to have to try them (will start with the Glad-Bake option, and upgrade to Teflon paper if required)
I take it you just cut said lining paper to the size of your pan and insert prior to pouring mixture in.

Thats the method I use.
Never thought of using two sheets ,must try it.
c

[woka]

I've never had any luck getting around the sticking problem with plain aluminium (kudos to those that have!), so I have a non-stick trangia fry pan specifically to avoid the problem. Works really well and the non-stick surface is (so far) much more robust than I thought it would be. I use "Olive Gove light" as a butter substitute and have a gas burner.

[Area54]

I've used a mesh toaster unit under my super thin stainless pan to spread the heat, used salted butter as the cooking lube with great success, but prefer peanut oil due to the higher scorch temp resistance.

I ended up making a diffuser out of 16g alloy treadplate to isolate the hotspots for the Kovea.

[corvus]

Good comment Area 54 however we unlike you are looking for the lightest cooking methods and not adding hardware to our load
C

[Area54]

The diffuser weighs 14grams. Bike riders have a penchant for uber lightweight kit too you know.

I offset it by not taking bottles of wine

[Humpo]

I have tried getting a non stick bbq liner ($19 from Bunnings) and cutting it out to the size of the pan. On low heat cook the pancake as normal and when you go to flip it use a second sheet to flip it. It works quite well.

[corvus]

The diffuser weighs 14grams. Bike riders have a penchant for uber lightweight kit too you know.

I offset it by not taking bottles of wine

Don't take the bottle use a dedicated platy for this which only weighs 25 grams so having a choice I will take the wine over pancakes any day
c