DIY Dry-Ingredient Mixes

[Chris Amirault]

This morning I was making pancakes and had the scale out. I finally found some corn flour that's got the grind I want in the bulk bin at Whole Foods, but the flimsy bag broke as I was using.

So, looking at all the ingredients assembled, I thought, "Why not combine the dry ingredients into proper ratios and bag them as a mix?" Easy enough to scale it up, of course, and now I have a bunch of bags that just need a couple of eggs, some milk, and some melted butter. It's only saving ten minutes, probably, getting out everything, weighing it, and putting it away. But in the morning it's probably the difference between making pancakes or not.

Surely there are other mixes that can be pre-made without loss of quality.... You ever do this?

[IndyRob]

Hot cocoa mix is worth doing. You can customize your own mix.

I once tried premixing dry ingredients for pizza dough. That turned out to be pretty pointless. Now I just make bigger batches and freeze some dough balls.

[catdaddy]

Good old Russian Tea from the 70s.

I've had luck packaging self-rising flour with shortening cut in----just add milk or evaporated milk and you have biscuit dough.

Also I've packaged the pancake mix with buttermilk powder and dry eggs----just add water and fat. Then put it in fancy containers for Christmas gifting.

[Lisa Shock]

Chris, try making the pancakes with a light oil, like canola, instead of butter. They will be moister. Also, a dash of nutmeg is very delicious. I won a pancake bake-off with the Joy of Cooking (1975 edition) recipe with those changes.

I have done the mix thing at work for employees who seem to be incapable of making biscuits, scones and such, just to be able to have a day off on occasion...

[Chris Hennes]

The cool thing about pancake mix is you can buy dried buttermilk powder, allowing you to reconstitute buttermilk pancakes without needing buttermilk on hand. In fact, you can manipulate the ratio of powder to liquid to make them even more buttermilk-y than normal buttermilk pancakes. The catch is that its best to store it in the fridge.

[tomdarch]

Alton Brown has done a few mixes on his show. Pancakes and hot cocoa for sure. I've got a food storage tub on my shelf labeled "pancake mix" for his recipe, but it's empty - too convenient to use, but I've been slacking on re-filling it. (Arrrrrghhhhh! Oh the suffering of taking 3 minutes to measure out the ingredients into the bin, and shake to mix! Soooooo hard!)

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/instant-pancake-mix-recipe/index.html

I've got some of the buttermilk powder, and it works great. If I'm remembering correctly, Cook's Illustrated strongly recommends it for baked recipes - I'd include pancakes in that category. Read the directions on the can - along with storing opened containers in the fridge, it may work better to add the powder to the dry ingredients in some recipes, rather than mixing the powder with liquid, which can be counterintuitive.

[Mjx]

I also do a hot chocolate mix, and if we're making pancakes the next morning, I'll premix all the dry ingredients, but that's all I can think of.

[BadRabbit]

I do dry herb mixtures a lot. I keep a dried basil, dried oregano(1 part\1 part) mix together all the time to use with crushed tomatoes, garlic powder and red wine vinegar for a quick pasta\pizza sauce.

I also keep my BBQ rub mixed together (except for the brown sugar component). It's smoked paprika, sweet paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, ancho chili powder, and mustard powder. I sprikle it on liberally and then rub with brown sugar and salt.

Edited February 7, 2011 by BadRabbit (log)

[Chris Amirault]

I didn't even think of spice mixes when I started this but... of course! I try to keep the portions pretty small so they don't peter out, but there's usually 5-6 different ones around, from curry powders to quatre epices to BBQ rub.

[FrogPrincesse]

I also use Alton Brown's pancake mix recipe. Only need to add eggs, buttermilk, and butter. I'm not a morning person so it helps having everything pre-measured. It's a good recipe too.

I have a post-it note with the mix recipe on the container's lid so I can refill without having to look for the recipe.

[Blether]

Before I got a re-zero-ing electric scale, one efficiency I worked out for the breadmaker was to weigh out the right amount of flour many times from a 5kg bag, and have a stck of plastic bags for one loaf each. Just because of the trouble saved on weighing, never mind mixing.

Otherwise, spice mixes of various kinds, like you, Chris. Most constantly, "mild curry powder" and garam masala, but I also "aromatic salt" that I made up for a recipe and barely use (it keeps forever, apparently, which might be long enough for me to get to playing with it a little).

[Hest88]

My standard is a dry rub mix I use for pork ribs. I've thought about doing it for pancakes, but the recipe I use doesn't have enough ingredients to make it much more of a time saver.

[Chris Amirault]

At 8:00a on Saturday, the teen sleeping over my daughter's house got a call from her mom saying "See you at 8:30." They were asleep, and I was unprepared. Grabbed a bag of pancake mix, buzzed two eggs, 1 1/2 c milk, and half a stick of butter I'd melted in the microwave while I heated two pans. The whole process took about 90 seconds; I ended up waiting for the pans to heat up.