This article will tell you how to stop your waffles from sticking to your waffle iron and falling apart. Listed below are details about the most common reasons why waffles stick to your waffle iron and fall apart including your waffle batter not being thick enough, the cooking plates not being hot enough, the nonstick coating getting damaged to the point where it does not do its job anymore, and there was not enough oil or butter in your batter.
1. One reason why your waffles may be falling apart is that the batter is not thick enough. If the batter is too thin, the resulting waffle will be too thin and not cohesive enough for it to not fall apart. Your batter can end up being too thin if you use too much milk or water or if there are too many eggs or not enough flour or sugar to bind the ingredients together and thicken the batter up.
The waffle batter should be thicker than pancake batter but thinner than bread dough. If your batter is too thick, you can always add some more milk or water and if it is too thin, you can add more flour to thicken it up.
2. You have to wait for the cooking plates to get hot enough, otherwise, the batter will not be cooked in the waffle iron long enough which means the waffle will fall apart when you try to remove it. The problem is that once you close the lid, the waffle iron will start baking your batter whether the plates are hot enough or not. If you want to make certain that the plates are hot enough, then you should flick some water droplets onto the plates. If they sizzle before they turn to steam, then the plates are ready to go.
3. There are times when the nonstick coating is so damaged that the waffle will stick to the plates too much and fall apart when you try to remove it. In this case, right before you pour the batter in, you should brush some butter or oil on the cooking plates to make them more slick and the waffles oilier and crispier, making them much easier to remove afterward.
As long as you do not use a metal fork to remove the waffles or clean the plates with a scouring pad or abrasive cleaners, then you will not cause the coating to flake off and make the waffles stick more than usual.
4. Another reason your waffles might be sticking to your waffle iron is that your batter did not contain enough vegetable oil or butter. Vegetable oil and butter not only make the exterior of your waffle nice and crispy but they also make the cooking surface less sticky. The main difference between vegetable oil and butter is that vegetable oil will make the interior moist and tender while butter will make the interior dense and heavy.
5. Using too much cooking spray on the cooking plates can also cause your waffles to stick and fall apart. You should not use a lot of cooking spray if each of the waffle plates already has a nonstick coating because residue from the spray can accumulate on the nonstick coating and cause it to become too sticky. Instead of using a cooking spray, you should buy a basting brush to brush some oil or butter over the surface of the cooking plates just to make certain that your waffles do not stick to the waffle iron from then on.
6. One of the most important features of an electric waffle iron is its ability to evenly distribute heat across its cooking plates because uniform heat distribution is what ensures the entire surface area of the waffle is properly heated so that it does not end up with any raw patches.
If the heating elements are not powerful enough or if your batter is too thick, the waffle batter will not get cooked for long enough, causing raw patches to appear in the finished waffle that will stick to the cooking surface and pull your waffle apart.
A waffle iron should have a power consumption of at least 800 watts to perfectly cook a 7 inch round Belgian or American-style waffle. A 4 square waffle iron that cooks 4 waffles at the same time should have a power consumption of at least 1200 watts per baking cycle.
If your batter is too thick, just add a little more oil or milk to thin it out a little bit to make it less like bread dough and a little more like pancake batter.
