Jacques Pépin makes easy and delicious crêpes

(pleasant music) - Hi, I'm Chef Jacques Pépin and this is "American Masters At Home".

- For me, there is nothing easier to make than crepes.

When I was a kid, my mother made crepes all the time.

When Claudine was born, my daughter, she would bring someone from school.

They get up, they sit at the counter, I make crepes.

And you see, I just put a skillet here and I put the large one, seven inch bottom.

I'm going to put a good tablespoon of butter on top of it.

Yeah, a good tablespoon.

And by the time this is melted, I'm ready to make the crepes.

So here I have a third of a cup of flour, one egg.

Whoop, that's it.

Add a little bit, I have half a cup of milk.

I just put a little bit of the milk, a little dash of salt and a bigger dash of sugar.

And then I mix.

Now, remember that you do your crepes, whether you do them for sweet, or whether you do them to stuff them with fish, or with meat or anything like this, he doesn't really matter, the crepe is the same.

Now notice what I did here, I mix it, but only with some of the liquid.

When I only have a little bit of liquid in it, the thread of the whisk will make it very smooth.

If I put all of the liquid in it, then I may have lumps.

So now I can put the rest of the liquid in it.

And as you can see here, my mixture is very thin.

Here, you can see our liquid it is.

And you can see also that my butter, now it's melted.

I will add the butter to it, mix it and that's it.

I'm ready to do the first crepe.

Now about a quarter of a cup of mixture, I put it here and spread it all around.

It's better to put less than more in it.

'Cause even if you have a little corner where you have a little bit of missing, we can always add it.

Now it has to cook about a minute, a good minute on one side.

It could even be, the batter could even be slightly more liquid than that.

Usually the first crepe they say is for the dog.

No, not for me, I use the first crepe.

And I turn it, okay.

Only time that I put butter in it is when I melt the butter to add to the mixture.

I don't have to do anything else now.

If you don't want to put butter, you can put a tablespoon of oil instead.

So you cook it about 30 second on the other side.

Now it's very loose so it's easy to flip.

Eh, regard.

And then now I slide it this way.

Okay.

Now, second crepe.

Notice that I put the batter in the corner here and I spread it out very fast and I shake it, and a little more, too.

Okay.

Now, as soon as the batter touch the pan, it will coagulate and set so the speed at which you spread it, determine how thin the crepe is going to be.

So, you don't put it in the center, you put it in the center, people do this, it goes all over the place.

And so no, you put it here on one side and spread it out this way to really spread it out.

And as I said, even if you have a little bit missing it's okay.

Now you can see the side of that crepe is getting, so I usually lift it up, turn it, nice brown color.

It could be a little browner than that.

But, that side of the crepe is always the nice side.

I mean, it's nicer browning.

So you turn it upside down in the pan, I flip it so that when you fold it to serve it, this is what you see on top.

So that's an important part.

And with a third of a cup of flour, as you can see, I would do about six crepes at least.

And those are large one.

Usually crepes are done into four or five ounce pan, but then you have to serve several per person.

Here I serve only one or two.

Here it is, so I flip it.

I put it this way, and again.

I did it again here from this side, spread it fast, shake it, shake it, shake it, that's it.

And actually, it could even be slightly more liquid.

I put a bit of water in there.

When it very liquid like this, you will see that the side of the crepe become like a, like little hole all over the place, like lace.

And we call it that lacy crepes.

Okay, two crepes like that per person is fine.

Okay, again.

Now, when I was a kid, usually we had the crepes with confiture, you know, as a dessert.

So I have some crepes here, maybe a tablespoon of apricot jam.

Sometime we just put sugar in the middle.

Sugar and some butter.

Sometime grated chocolate on top of it.

So you can have it this way.

Here, I can fold it, and as you see, that side is a nicer side.

So this is a side which should go on top.

Folding it in fourths like this.

Some of the time you can do it this way and roll it that way.

Another way of rolling it.

Sometimes just with a bit of sugar on top.

Easy, inexpensive, a dessert fit for a king.

This is how you make crepes.

Happy cooking.

(pleasant music)