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Growing up, I LOVED pancakes. I remember every Saturday morning my mom would make stacks and stacks of them in our tiny kitchen and I would eat and eat them until I couldn’t eat any more. Even now, my favorite weekend in-home brunch is to cook up some pancakes and brew a pot of coffee and curl up in front of the DVR.

There’s a popular spot in Nashville called Pancake Pantry that is so popular that people line up for hours to get a table, and I had friends in town over the weekend who are big fans so on Sunday morning I bundled up and we waited for an hour before we were seated and served with menus.

Poor service aside, I was really not impressed with my pancakes. I didn’t say anything to them because the were all gloriously happy, but they didn’t taste any different than the box of Kroger pancakes I cook up at home.

At work the next day I told my co-workers, who had suggested going to Pancake Pantry a few weeks ago with Sixx, that I went and wasn’t crazy about it. Mouths agape, we started talking about pancakes and what makes a good pancake when almost everyone said the same thing to me: perhaps the real draw to Pancake Pantry for them is that they don’t know how to make their own pancakes.

This time I was in disbelief as they all started to tell me where their cakes went wrong. “One side is always burned!” “I cut into it and it’s still runny.” “When I pour it into the pan, it just spreads all over the whole thing.”

I started troubleshooting one by one and it occurred to me that maybe it would be good to provide a primer on the art of pancake making.

• If your batter runs all over the pan: you have used too much water. Add more pancake mix, thicken it up, and enjoy your feast.
• If one side of your pancake burns, your pan or griddle is too hot. Adjust the temperature down. Enjoy pancake bliss.
• If your pancake is runny after cooking, you didn’t cook it long enough, dummy. Cook longer.

And that, my friends, is how to pancake.