Perfectly crispy Potato pancakes (latkes)

okay so today we're going to make potato pancakes really really simple but one of my favorite things um this is two pounds of peeled washed and dried white potatoes you know we're going to do is just use a regular box grater with a food processor you can definitely you know use the grating attachment in your food processor I try not to take the food processor out once I really have to because there's a lot of parts of that that need so go ahead and bring up these potatoes and then move to the next step okay so we have all of our potatoes grate it and don't let this Brown scare you a potatoes are going to oxidize which just means it's a chemical reaction that they're that they have to the air they turn a little bit Brown it's not the end of the world you know you consult them right away it will slow that down but it is what it is it's a natural process I have a very large onion here I'm actually only going to use half of this area and what I'm going to do is I'm gonna peel it and then I'm also going to grate this onion very very fine you don't want to chop it you're not looking for bits and pieces of onion throughout the potato pancake you're actually looking for this I need to flavor the potatoes throughout potatoes and onions go so well together and so pretty go ahead and just grate this I am you see what happens it makes like a almost like onion juice and the onions are quite pulverized so really really small that you're not going to get chunks and pieces but you're gonna get all that delicious flavor okay so all of the onion is great it I'm something you notice about potatoes as they sit they start to release a lot of water and what I like to do right before I add the rest of my ingredients is just go ahead and get rid of that excess water you don't need it it doesn't it doesn't hurt them if you leave it but I just like to strain it away and this way they stay nice and tight um I'm using my hands you know my my mom used to always say that our hands are the best utensils that God could give us I use them I wash my hands 15 times when I'm in the kitchen so don't worry that they're not clean but definitely when you can use your hands okay so we've got this mixture here so to this I'm going to go ahead and just add one egg I'm going to add one quarter of a cup of all-purpose flour just you know just enough to bind the ingredients I'm not looking to make you know a cake here I'm just looking to bring these ingredients all together and then I'm going to use a teaspoon of salt again kosher sea salt those are my preferences and then I'm gonna just add a little bit yeah I like the color that they give if you don't have these on hand that's fine you absolutely do not need them yes certainly if you want at this point is you can put a little bit of fresh parsley you can even use a little bit of dried parsley I like the color contrast when I'm looking at the you know the finished product the white potato is a little speck of green in there this is again this is a preference thing so you can put whatever fresh herb you like in there or no herb at all if you don't you know if you don't like herbs at all definitely your choice so I'm just going to go ahead and mix this until everything come together not going to over mix it there's no need I'm not you know there's not a hundred ingredients in here we're just going to give it a quick mix excellent okay so now what I'm going to do is I'm going to get out a nonstick skillet these work really good a nonstick this is not something you'd use your cast iron pan for or you could if you wanted to but I don't recommend it to potatoes it'll tend to stick and you'll have to use you know a metal spatula to get them off the bottom so if you have a nonstick definitely go ahead and use a nonstick pan okay so we have our nonstick skillet I put a little bit of canola oil down on the bottom of the skillet is nice and hot and we're going to go ahead and start cooking all right potato pancakes and you see even more waters coming out on the bottom I just keep them pushed away I just want them to be nice and crisp I don't want to be soggy for that nice sizzle potatoes are very funny um if you don't expose them to really high temperatures when you're trying to get a nice sear on them the nice crust they'll tend to get soggy and there's nothing worse than a soggy greasy potato pancake so you know you want to keep these now fairly high and just like anything else there's no need to keep turning them constantly we're going to ground them on one side when we get going to get nice and brown if we think they're getting brown too quickly we can always then once they get the crisp on them we can always turn the gas down a little bit let them finish cooking and then turn them over just make sure you read just your gas when you turn them over and give an eye on them you know a lot of people don't realize that when you're cooking on the stove a pan has what's called recovery time and that's the amount of time it takes for it to come back up to the temperature you want it after you go ahead and add your cold food so right now I'm going to actually turn this up a little bit because when I added the cold food I actually dropped the temperature of the pan really quickly so I want to go ahead and keep that that nice sear on them I want them to continue to get crispy I'm going to keep an eye on them because as I hear the activity increase or I start to smell them getting a little darker than I want I'm going to go ahead down and lower it so you know don't be afraid once you set your temperature on your on your flame you don't have to leave it there you know it's not that much of an exact science you have to keep adjusting it again to allow for that recovery time okay so these have been cooking for about three minutes so they're starting to get a little bit lighter on the outside they're not as white as they were and we're going to just go ahead and flip them look at that that's a beautiful color that's exactly what we're looking for perfect and again I'm going to go ahead now and I'm going to turn the gas up because the surface that I just flipped over onto the hot side of the pan was cooler than the pan itself so it's going to bring that temperature down I turn the gas up to compensate I listen for my crackling and my sizzling and when I know that it's come up the temperature again I'm going to turn it down just a little bit but I want to make sure that I maintain that nice golden crisp outside and I don't get these potatoes soaked in oil and make them soggy because that's not appetizing at all okay so these cooked about you know three or four more minutes they're really really perfect at this point in time I see the color on the other side very nice so we're going to go ahead and take them off and we're going to move them and this just helps kind of remove any of the excess oil that's been left on them this is a trick my mom taught me when we were kids whenever we went to the supermarket she would always ask for paper bags two reasons one plastic isn't good for the environment and two the paper can be reused in the kitchen any time she was frying eggplant or you know making potato pancakes and I just put a paper towel over it just because I don't know where this bag has been and I don't want my food touching it so I'll leave it here for a little bit and I'll go ahead and let it just soak up any oil at this point they're nice and hot I do give them a little sprinkle of salt very small sprinkle of salt any time you take foods directly out from being fried with any kind of oil hit it with a little bit of salt the salt will just melt into that top layer give you that little bite of flavor when you bite into it what I normally do is I'll make a whole tray of these you know 15 20 of them at a time and hopefully my family doesn't eat them faster than I can cook them but if they do manage to survive their first 10 minutes on I will start my convection oven I'll put it on low you know maybe around 200 degrees and then once thieve is drained for a few minutes I'll go ahead and transfer them into the convection oven and this keeps them nice and high and it also keeps them nice and crispy and then if I'm serving them you know to a large amount of people they're all still very hot when I go ahead and serve them okay so these are all done we had them in the convection oven staying hot now we're going to go ahead in the dish to serve what I really like about these more than anything is how versatile they are you can have them with breakfast which we have very often um you can go ahead and just if you want you know put an egg on top or if you want you can have them at night with dinner and we absolutely love them with a little bit of sour cream so there's no wrong way to eat these there's no right time of day to eat them go ahead and make them enjoy them throughout the day you make them for breakfast they're not going to last till dinner so don't count on any leftovers and there you have it thanks for coming by and see us again because there's always something good cooking in aunt Susie's kitchen

Channel: Aunt Susie's Kitchen

Views: 1,017,691

Rating: 4.6868906 out of 5

Keywords: Latkes, How To, Food, Potato, Family, Potatoes, Friends, Delicious, Cooking, Aunt Susies Kitchen, Cook, Homemade, Kitchen

Id: YR7nRkhbCQ4

Length: 9min 45sec (585 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 15 2014