Potato Latkes
Grated potato and onion, wrung out hard, bound with egg and a spoonful of the potato's own starch, and fried until the edges go lacy. Hanukkah cooking, and the best thing that happens to a potato.
Photograph credit: Kedainiai pancakes with traditional crackling and sour cream sauce by Bdx · CC0 · Wikimedia Commons
How to Cook Potato Latkes
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Grate the potatoes and onion on the coarse side of a box grater, alternating between them so the onion juice coats the potato as you go.
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Pile everything into a clean tea towel, gather it up, and wring it hard over a bowl. Keep going until nothing more comes out.
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Leave the liquid in the bowl to stand for 3 minutes, then pour the water off carefully — a thick white paste of potato starch will be stuck to the bottom.
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Scrape that starch back in with the wrung potato and onion, then mix in the eggs, flour, salt, pepper and baking powder.
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Heat 5 mm of oil in a heavy frying pan to 180°C / 355°F — a shred of potato should sizzle immediately.
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Drop in heaped tablespoons of mixture and flatten each one to about 8 cm across with the back of the spoon, leaving the edges ragged.
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Fry 3 to 4 minutes a side, in batches of four, until deep golden and lacy at the rim.
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Drain on a rack rather than kitchen paper — paper steams the underside — and salt at once.
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Serve immediately with apple sauce and soured cream (optional).
Related guide: Ingredient substitutions.
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What Can Go Wrong
- The settled starch is the trick. Everyone throws that liquid away and then wonders why their latkes fall apart.
- A rack, not kitchen paper. This applies to everything fried.
- They hold for 20 minutes in a 140°C / 285°F oven on a rack, which is long enough to fry the rest.
Good to Know About Potato Latkes
Water is the enemy twice over: it makes the latke soggy and it makes hot oil spit. Wringing the grated potato in a towel removes most of it — and the starch that comes out with the liquid settles at the bottom of the bowl within a few minutes, so pouring the water off and scraping that paste back in returns the binder while losing the water. Grating the onion in with the potato is not just flavour: its sulphur compounds slow the enzymatic browning that turns raw potato grey.
What to Serve It With
Apple sauce and soured cream · Smoked salmon · Cold beer
Storing Leftovers
Best immediately. Refrigerated for 2 days; re-crisp 8 minutes at 200°C / 392°F. They freeze cooked for 2 months.
Potato Latkes Nutrition Facts
No nutrition figures are given for this recipe: they cannot be worked out reliably from its ingredient list (how much frying oil the food takes up cannot be known from the recipe). Why some recipes have none.
Dairy-free when served without the soured cream.
Your notes on this recipe
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Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.
First published ; last changed .
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