Smart internet users will take information with a pinch of salt. The same goes for many cooking tips, tricks, and recipes shared online. TikTok has had a lot of controversial food trends (like hyper-realistic cakes), many of which were created to boost ratings or started as jokes. The scrambled pancake trend is one example of this, where some people took the joke too seriously.
The scrambled pancakes featured in the TikTok video, which has nearly 20 million views as of this writing, are made by pouring pancake batter into a hot skillet and stirring it like an egg. The result is small, uneven chunks of cooked pancake batter that can be piled on a plate and served with common garnishes like syrup and berries. But there’s a twist in the story: creator @archivedchef made the video as a joke, concluding with “Psycho. Don’t try this. It was not tasty.” The lack of irony at the beginning of the video led many to believe that the creator was actually serious about stirring pancake batter, but it seems that no one was left in the dark until the final revelation. A significant percentage of the video’s 12,500 comments took scrambled pancakes seriously, leaving appalled opinions in the comments section.
Read more: 15 mistakes everyone makes when cooking eggs
Are scrambled pancakes a culinary crime?
The line, “You’ve been making pancakes wrong your whole life,” should have been a big hint that @archivedchef’s video was meant to be a joke. Sadly, TikTok seems to lack both a sense of sarcasm and the ability to watch the full video. From “this is a crime” to “i would never disrespect pancakes like that,” as seen in the video, commenters needlessly defended round pancakes even though the creator was on their side all along.
Ironically, even though @archivedchef was joking, the video convinced several people that scrambled pancakes were a delicious idea. “Scrambled pancakes, WHAT?! This is life changing,” one commenter wrote. “Life changing” sounds like an exaggeration, but if flipping pancakes isn’t your forte, maybe it is. Another commenter wrote, “I was never persuaded,” but in fairness, scrambled pancakes do seem a lot more appealing than the name would suggest.
In fact, scrambled pancakes actually exist in Austria and Germany, where they’re called Kaiserschmarren. Legend has it that a German farmer accidentally made dirty pancakes for the emperor, and the recipe caught on. The batter is different from most American pancakes, calling for whipped egg whites (and often raisins), but the Kaiserschmarren recipe can also be made with a pancake mix. The key is to make them well scrambled.
Read the original article on Mashed.
