I’m sure you sometimes feel the same way as me: “Screw my gut health, I’m heading to iHop, and they best be ready for me!!”. But you know what, I got you. Here’s my gut-friendly, gluten-freen iHop-killer pancakes!
Gluten free | Low sugar | Foodgasm-friendly
The recipe we ALL need to nourish our souls!
Lots of readers have been emailing in over the last few months and saying…
“Richard, I love me some bone broth, fish and vegetables as much as the next person. But by golly, I sure miss eating something a wee bit naughty. Please save my taste buds and help me stick to this diet with a delicious, but healthy, recipe!”
I got you! And your gorgeous taste buds. Because step aside IHOP, there is a new pancake king in the house!
Yes, I’m referring to myself.
And before you start thinking…gee, Richard is a bit over confident. Here’s the thing: unlike IHOP, my pancake recipe is designed using the most beautiful ingredients and cooking hacks out there, so it is actually good for our gut!
Seriously.
Not only will you walk away from eating my blueberry pancakes with a big blissed-out smile on your face, but you’ll feel great. None of that bloating, sickly feeling one gets when they roll themselves out of IHOP and into their car.
How are my magical pancakes possibly good for gut health?
Great question! So as a starting point, I’ve eliminated all the horrible little critters found in normal pancakes. From gluten-rich flour to high FODMAP fruits to sugar-loaded syrups and sauces, they’re all gone. And good riddance!
Then I’ve added in really nutritious ingredients – that also taste great.
We’ve got antioxidant & polyphenol rich blueberries in there. They’re also very low in sugar and just as importantly for us, they are low FODMAP (including being low in my famous foe, El Fructose).
Winning!
Next up we have coconut flour, which is high in insoluble fiber. This is the type of fiber neither us or our microbiome digest. Which means it is really helpful for pushing food through our tract and thus delivering beautiful bowel movements!
Following up are our wonderful pastured eggs. Produced by chickens that aren’t living on grains all day long, these eggs are much tastier and can be easier for us to tolerate. Plus, they deliver a slew of other health benefits, from increased omega 3 fatty acids to very clean protein profiles.
The final main ingredient adding even more goodness to this recipe is the gut-friendly milk.
Depending on what you choose from the options below, you can enjoy healthy fats that keep you full all morning long and/or a little extra protein (another great way to satisfy our hunger!).
How to make My Preeecious Pancakes
I’ll run through the ingredients you need to have, including some useful notes on each.
And then I will walk you through the cooking method. I know pancakes aren’t complicated, but I want to make sure these turn out fluffy & spectacular for you, so you don’t go crawling back to IHOP and begging them for some gluten-rich pancakes with all kinds of crazy sugar toppings.
Step 1 – buy the ingredients & measure out
Here’s the shopping list. It is nice and simple.
So buy the 5 main ingredients…
- 1 cup blueberries – fresh blueberries taste better, but can be expensive and often out of season. Thankfully, frozen can work great as well, just make sure to fully thaw them before using.
- 1 cup coconut flour – I like to call this ingredient The Gluten Slayer! Because it makes you forget all about your old friend, Senor Gluten. But best of all, it is so much better than other non-gluten flour options we could potentially use.
- 3 eggs – ideally pastured or free range, per above notes.
- 2 cups gut-friendly milk – eg almond milk, coconut milk, kefir milk – if I’m feeling fancy I like to mix almond and coconut milks together, or buy a pre-made blend of them.Note: if we use kefir, keep in mind a lot of the probiotic benefits will degrade due to the cooking/heating process.
- Lakanto’s ‘Maple Syrup’ – it is a magical concoction, and basically totally sugar/carb free! Their secret is monk fruit and erythritol (which is a sugar alcohol/polyol, but recognized as low FODMAP). ChocZero is also a great option worth trying. I have no connection with either company, just love their products. Bravo!If you want to make your own, here is a fantastic homemade sugar-free ‘maple syrup’ recipe.
Hopefully you have these other ingredients in the pantry. If not buy them as well…
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon salt – great flavor balancer
- Powdered erythritol or stevia – this should be used to taste or per product’s recommended serving size. As it really depends on how concentrated the product you buy is, eg pure version v diluted version. When I made my pancakes on the weekend, I used 3 tablespoons of pure erythritol.
- Coconut oil or grass fed butter – we’ll use this for frying, so we just need enough to prevent the pancake from sticking.
Step 2 – cook this IHOP-killer of a pancake
Now, let me get my Gordon Ramsay hat on for this…
- Get your big boy/girl muscles out and whisk the 3 eggs in a bowl until frothy.
- Then stir in the 2 cups of milk and 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract.
- Sift the dry stuff in and stir it through – i.e. 1 cup coconut flour, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1/4 teaspoon salt and your erythritol powder (or stevia).
- How are you doing?! You want to make sure your batter is now fluffy. If it is so runny I could swim in it, sift some more coconut flour in. And if it is too thick, add a tad more milk.
- Now, plop the blueberries in and give it a stir for just a few seconds. i.e. don’t over mix it now as we want this to stay nice and fluffy. ALTERNATIVELY, you can just add the blueberries on top of the cooked pancakes, but I think they taste most wonderful when mixed in pre-cooking as they are then nice and warm.
- Grab your frying pan, turn the heat on low-medium, grease it with some coconut oil or grass fed butter – eg 1 teaspoon.
- Wait a little, then drip a teaspoon of batter in to test. If it sizzles slightly, you are ready to ladle in your first pancake.
- Cook on one side and flip it when the bubbles come up the surface of the pancake.
- Whip that pancake off the pan when golden brown on both sides.
- Serve with a knob of grass fed butter (if you can tolerate) and drizzle your gut-friendly maple syrup over them. Add a few cheeky more blueberries on top if you like. Prepare for foodgasm!
Keep in mind that your first pancake can be a Kitchen Nightmare. If that happens, just get back to it and make pancake #2, #3 and so forth. Soon you’ll be dancing.
Want to get fancy with these gluten-free pancakes?
There are all sorts of ways to pimp your pancake.
You can add (or substitute) some other low FODMAP fruits like strawberries and bananas (unripe). Or you could dust them with cocoa powder or 80%+ dark chocolate powder.
If you’re feeling a bit nutty – as I do when making these on the weekend – pop some chopped macadamias over them, or walnuts. (You just leveled up your texture game. Ramsay would be proud.)
Bonus points if you lightly toast the nuts in a pan before adding them on top…welcome to warm, creamy pancake heaven.
How to make breakfast easy to digest
If we can properly digest our breakfast, it means our body will be able to break down our food better, meaning less irritation in our gut, AND it will be able to unlock all the nutrients from the food we eat, meaning more energy and more fuel for the body to run on.
The most important way to increase our digestion in the AM is to not rush breakfast. That means we need to sit down, chew every bite 20 times, and be mindful as we savor the pancakes.
i.e. let’s try to avoid eating whilst zoned out watching Netflix or Youtube (something I am admittedly often guilty of).
And if you want a little extra help, then just follow my morning protocol…
- 1 hour before I eat, I mix 5-10g of this L-Glutamine powder in a glass of water. Deeelicious!
- Then when I sit down to eat my delicious blueberry pancakes, I take 1 capsule of these digestive enzymes and 1 capsule of this probiotic.
And that is how my gut starts the day in warrior mode! Feeling goooood.
P.S. if you want to get your gut back to health so you can also eat some of your old favorites then I recommend you checkout my FREE leaky gut ebook here. (PDF download)