Potato Cakes - (Tater Pancakes) - Depression Era -The Hillbilly Kitchen

howdy folks and welcome to the hillbilly kitchen today we're going to be making potato cakes now potato cakes are a very very old recipe they've been around for forever and they are leftover recipes so there are a way of stretching what food you've had when my kids were little I can't even tell you how many times I came in and I picked up a couple extra kids and everybody was hungry and I went to fix dinner and either had no potatoes or had one or two potatoes so I dig through the refrigerator and look for leftovers and they would usually get potato cakes they're super simple to make and they're very very hard to mess up I've got the basic ingredients over here and most of the time when I made them when the kids were little I didn't add anything other than flour milk an egg some salt pepper and pretty much always some onion powder just to give it extra flavor I will tell you this you can stretch your potatoes quite a long way with this if you need to I've got about 3/4 of a cup of flour here and I've got a cup of milk I probably won't use all of it because you do want your batter pretty thick but if you had to feed a lot of kids that you could take this same two cups of potatoes and I've got about 2 cups of potatoes here and you could add a cup of 1/2 of flour 2 eggs and even more milk to stretch them farther and feed more people but for today we have about two cups of leftover cold potatoes and just go ahead and dump your flour in there now I'm using self-rising flour you can use plain flour and no baking soda or you can use plain I'm sorry baking powder or you can use plain flour and add a little baking powder I like mine a little bit fluffy so I a little living in them so I do either use self-rising flour or I add a little bit of baking powder to it if I'm using plain flour here's your egg a little bit of a beat before you throw it in there just to make it easier to mix up and even though your leftover potatoes are seasoned with salt and pepper you're gonna want to add a little bit more because you've added the flour you've added the egg and you're gonna add the milk and this is just to taste I'm making these for me in bread bread definitely likes more salt he will like more soft than that even and I'm gonna mix this up just a little bit oh forgot my onion powder and I know some of you were seeing the chopped onion over here even if I add chopped onion to them I still like a little bit of onion powder just because the way the flavor mix is in there and I'm probably using a teaspoon to a half a teaspoon if I wasn't doing anything else if I wasn't putting any other additives in it I would put at least a teaspoon of onion powder in this because this is a leftover recipe and one of those things that you just can't hardly mess up if for some reason you've got to make these and you don't have an egg you can make them without the egg or people with egg allergies you can make them without the egg and I'm gonna start with about half of this and milk and see what I have here how much milk you add is really gonna depend on how thick your leftover potatoes are to start with okay that actually looks pretty good you want it to stick to the fork but still fall off of it are the spoon you can mix them up with a fork or spoon or whatever because you do want them to spread out when you put them in your pan and we're gonna fry these um I'm about medium heat you just want to put enough oil in your pan to cover the bottom of the pan your it's up to you what kind of oil you used to cook them in I do like the grapeseed oil or corn oil for these I use corn oil a lot for these just because that flavor is really good with the potatoes you can also fry them in butter or some other fat that you like I usually do the corn oil sometimes I'll do the butter or the grapeseed oil now what I have over here is a few of the limitless add-ins that you can do to these and I told you this is a leftover recipe this is a stretch your what food you have recipe you can use leftover ham in these if you're trying to get sneak some vegetables in on your kids you could chop up some cauliflower really fine and add it in this and the kids would not know it was in there and you could get some vegetables in them that way what I'm doing here is kind of a loaded potato cake thing I've got some shredded cheddar cheese some bacon crumbles some finely chopped onions and some finely chopped green peppers now if I were making these for kids I would only use what I have in this bowl right now or maybe add some cheese if it's older kids you might get away with the bacon like I said sneak some vegetables in there on them but I'm gonna start these just with the basic ones and then I'm going to add this other stuff in now I've already got my pan on and like I said it's on medium heat you can see my oil is hot and it's starting to build in here and if you just use a regular protect a regular table spoon to scoop these out that'll give you about the right size just a full tablespoon and you don't want to overcrowd them and you're going to let them fry mmm three four minutes on each side maybe a little longer it kind of depends on how much milk you put in and how wet they are you can even make them without the milk at all and make them really thick and just press them out with the back of your spoon but like I said when I made them I was always making them to stretch the food so I would add the milk and stuff so that they go farther when you serve these you can serve them just like this you know with nothing on them just as a side dish my kids like them with ketchup a lot if you're doing them for adults sour cream is a good topping farm or if you're doing them like I've got them over here with the bacon and onions and the peppers serve them with a little ranch dressing that's really really good too and Brett likes them that way because he likes a little bit baked potatoes and it kind of gives you that same flavor when I started this video I said it was a very old recipe and and it was used to stretch your food this recipe was widely used during the Depression here but I suspect it's probably a lot older than that my guess is that this recipe probably goes back to around the potato famine in Ireland and I know we have a few viewers in Ireland so if you watch this video maybe you could give us some insight into that if it really is that old I said I suspect that's probably where the basic recipe originated another thing I used to do with these two when my kids were little sometimes I would add corn to it just make sure you drain the corn really well and mix a little corn in there especially if you're doing it all leftovers and you've got some leftover corn you can get rid of it because leftover corn really isn't that good by itself and you want fry them until they're just about like that bright that are nice and golden brown before flip them they take about as long to cook as a pancake and my kids used to call them potato pancakes you can see they do rise it up just a little bit as they could but not a whole lot because it was just self-rising flour which doesn't have a ton of baking powder in it but it has enough to make it rise and I didn't use that much if you want to fluffier than this because you have so many potatoes in there and such a small amount of flour you can add a little baking powder even with your self-rising flour and it'll make it fluffier I'm going to add these ingredients one at a time because these are all actually different variations of the recipe I'm going to start with just the chopped onions if you've got little kids they won't use to eat these most little kids anyway just over a huge off the onions but whatever you add in just stir it up now when you take them out you do want to drain them on something a rack or some paper towels or something and these are done they look really good the second side actually looks a little bit better than the first side because my pen is the right temperature now some in here with our onions as you're picking these two you might have to add a little bit more oil because some of your oil is getting soaked up and your potato cakes keep an eye on the temperature your pan make sure it doesn't get too hot because sometimes when you fried something like this the temperature will kind of creep up on you and they'll start to burn even though you don't change the way your stove is set so you might have to turn them down just a little bit after you've cooked a pan or two while these are frying I want to take just a minute and think everybody who is a part of this channel and I want to tell you just how great our God is if you are in need of encouragement in need of something to show you that God does answer prayers and that he is very real and that he cares about our daily lives I want you to go back and look at the last few videos and some of the comments on or if you're one of those people who are seeking God but you're just not quite sure you're looking for something to show you that he's real or maybe didn't I don't know there's a lot of people who just can't quite grasp the fact that the creator of the universe is interested in our lives and I want to tell you that he really is and we as a part of your life wonderful things can happen for you if you are not saved you first have to be safe because jesus said no man comes to the Father but by me so if you're not saved but you're seeking God find you a Christian friend or a church who can lead you through the process of being saved or leave a comment on here and either me or somebody else who watches these videos they will walk you through the steps they will tell you what you need to know they will give you the resources so that you can find that peace of forgiveness and you can receive eternal life but I've got to tell you how great God is okay I don't know three or four weeks ago I announced that I was going to be doing this full-time and a few hundred of you or several hundred of you actually have said that you are praying for this channel to succeed and what God has done because you have all prayed is the last video that I uploaded it received over a hundred thousand views in the first week that it was up now I know that's not like phenomenal by YouTube's standards may be some people who are doubting this and watching this but probably like a hundred thousand views 100 thousand uses they've a lot of views for a cooking show and it's definitely a lot of use for our channel on average when we upload a video the first week it gets three thousand views it went from that three thousand to over a hundred thousand that's more than ten times okay that is a huge increase and not only did the views go up that much but on average our channel gains about a thousand subscribers a month around there in the last week we've gained five thousand subscribers so I want to welcome all of our new subscribers thank you very much god really is interested in our lives he really does care about what we're doing on a daily basis he really does hear our prayers and he really does answer them and it's totally life-changing when you have that when you're a part of that when you know that God is involved in your life when you know that God cares about you when you know that there is an Almighty God you can call on when you need something and I really wish that everybody who hears this could find that and that's my prayer is that everybody here this video who watches this video finds that they know what it's like to have an almighty all-powerful creator of the universe God is part of their life who will answer their prayers who will give them what they need maybe not everything you want now I'm not going to stand here and tell you that every prayer you pray God is going to say sure here it is because it doesn't work that way but God will give you everything you need and he will give you the desires of your heart just like the Bible says that he will you know it's I'm standing here telling you to go back and look and you can see the evidence faith is really believing in something that there is no proof of and there is no proof but there is a lot of evidence in life and if you are truly seeking God and you look you will find enough evidence to believe without a shadow of a doubt that he is real so thank you all so very much for your prayers I really can't tell you what they mean how important they are but those of you who are praying you know what they mean and you know how important they are and you know how powerful they are so thank you so very much welcome to all of our new subscribers I hope you all stick around for a very very long time and I know some of you have been watching these videos for five years now some of you have been with us since that first silly video hey we've got another painful ready to come out the onions don't change it that much I'm going to go ahead and my cheese should've done that while I was talking you do want to make sure you get the cheese stirred up good because you don't really want it on your fair pan are we gonna have to add a little bit of oil before I do the next pan full my pan is getting hot so I'm gonna turn it down just a tiny bit and that make it so mean here I'm gonna run out a batter before I get all my ingredients at it but you can see something that happens here every time you add something else to this it kind of increases how much you have so you're stretching that 2 cups of potatoes so they don't feed more people and that's kind of the point of this recipe that's how it came into existence like I said what's the stretch what you had so anything at all that will go with potatoes you can throw in here you can do like some chopped up beef if you've got a little bit of leftover roast and some peas and do like a shepherd's pie flavor that's really good in here gosh just anything if it'll go with potatoes you can throw it in there we'll do our peppers next so we've got onions peppers cheese and so far this is vegetarian so if you're looking for a really good vegetarian side dish and maybe even you know if you're doing a big dinner and you have a vegetarian coming this could almost be a meal because it's got the cheese in it for protein and it's got the peppers and the onions in it the cheese makes it a little more runny as it melts and it sticks to your spatula it'll also stick to your pan so you're gonna have to kind of loosen these up a little bit as they could as far as amounts of stuff you add in here it's really kind of up to you and your tastes like the cheese I added almost two cups of shredded cheese but I had already cooked almost half of my batter my kids would eat it if it was 80% cheese I said the cheese does make it running here it makes it break apart easier so depending on what kind of texture you want you might not want to add that much cheese you might want to do two cups in a whole batch which is what I had there or maybe even cut it down to a cup of cheese and a whole batch in the same way with the peppers and the onions and stuff just it's based on what you like or based on how much you've had if you're doing leftover stuff what I had was about half a pepper and half an onion that I had chopped up really fine now I've used a lot of it before up at the peppers in there so there's quite a few peppers in there you might not like that meaning you made and want more but there's not really any hard and fast rules of how much you would add where I put the cheese in here the my batter looks a little bit thicker but once the cheese melts you know the potato cakes are not as thick and I added a little oil in here but where all my cheese is melting it has oil in it so it looks like I've added a water oil the cheese also really changes the color and the texture you can see over here these are the ones with the onion and these are the plain ones it changed a little bit even with the onions but the color really changed after I added the cheese okay now these are going to be really soft because of the cheese don't worry about that just be careful when you take them out they will stiffen back up as the cheese cools just a little bit be careful with them because they'll break pretty easy and now we're going to do some of our peppers now up to this point you're good with kids maybe not with the onions kids definitely aren't going to like the pepper so but with the peppers you're still you've got a vegetarian side dish and I'm going to add some bacon now I'm not going to put all these bacon crumbles in here because I cook so much of this it would just be too much with the bacon now with the bacon crumbles or if you put some little top pieces of chopped ham in there or something these would make a really good lunch just all by their self and I've done stuff like that a lot it's hot lunch and it's something different you know when you're looking for something different for lunch sometimes this is a good option with the bacon or with some ham or even doing like I said the young shepherds pie version where you put some little pieces of chopped up roast and maybe some peas in here okay these here with the peppers are done now and I said once you added the cheese they get really really soft and hard to handle but once that cheese starts to cool down they firm back up and take more of the same texture that we had with the ones that just had the onions or the plain ones but you have to be real careful when you're taking them out of the pan and flipping them and stuff if you have cheese in them okay now we're gonna do our bacon ones and I'm just gonna finish these up in this pan and you can see how much sticker my batter is getting as I add more stuff to it you could actually add a little more milk but with all that cheese in there I wouldn't if you were if you didn't have the cheese and you were adding other stuff you would want a little bit more milk probably because those are kind of stiff but when that cheese melts they are not going to be kind of stiff they're gonna be just like this what I was talking about with the texture of the cheese these that just came out of a pan they were very tender but these that we did before that just had the cheese and the onions in them you can actually lift them up kind of like the other ones that we did they're a little thinner than the ones that don't have the cheese in them because of the cheese melts it makes the whole batter spread out more but they still have pretty much that exact same texture and you can see the difference in the color these were the plain ones and then we added the onions and they got a little warm around and then once we added the cheese they had this kind of orange tint to them and then now these were the peppers you can see the pretty little green peppers in there and I can probably get these off and that can now but the peppers and a lot of color to them and make them really pretty something that you can serve that will add a little color to your meal as a side dish these bacon ones are coming out absolutely perfect that's good because they're the ones that Brett's gonna like the most so there's his lunch and he's probably way past hungry I've been working on this video for a while and I told it we would have these for lunch then we've done these five different ways in this video and the variety that you can do with potato cakes is literally only limited by your imagination and left over shelf in your refrigerator and just the plain potato cakes with the flour and the milk and salt and pepper and onion powder if you want you don't even have to add that they're great just like that and kids like them with ketchup adults like I'm going sour cream you don't have to go to all this extra trouble but if you want something different for lunch add a little meat and cheese and some peppers and onions to it if you want a really pretty side dish you can just do them with peppers and the onions and leave out the cheese or you can do when the peppers and the onions and the cheese add a little cheese tune for kids make some special my kids would probably tell you they didn't get cheese in and very much because usually when I made them it was because I needed to go grocery shopping and they had eaten all the potatoes and all the cheese and all of everything else and the leftover shelf was the only thing to eat in the refrigerator but yet like I said it's literally only limited by your imagination and I would like to hear from some people in Ireland if this recipe is out because I think it probably is or at least get your ideas about it what you think about how old it is my granny she called them arch taters and she spoke with that real thick Irish mountain accent and for years I thought it arched a turd with some kind of special potato and as I got older I realized that she was saying Irish potatoes but she called ours taters that kind of reminded me of a comment that I got on one of my older videos somebody commented and they said she ain't no real hillbilly she's making all that up nobody calls them taters well it's truly its struggle for me to say the word potato because I call them taters my whole life and like I said I was pretty old before I figured out what an arch tater was and I think these are perfect take a picnic there and I'll messed it up getting out of the pan the cheese does make them sticky and if it gets on your spatula like this it makes it very hard to get out of the pan so I'll clean that one off before you get another one out so whether you're looking for something different for lunch and you want to add in some bacon or ham or something or you're just trying to feed a bunch of hungry kids with some leftover mashed potatoes paper cakes are a great recipe and it's very versatile add anything to it you want and any amount to it you want I really hope you give these a try it's a classic and it never stopped to begin delicious I appreciate you joining this in the hillbilly kitchen I love all your comments I'm so grateful for all your printers and all your encouragement welcome all of our new people and before you leave don't forget to click like and subscribe if you haven't already and remember to put God first we'll see y'all again soon [Music] [Music]

Channel: The Hillbilly Kitchen - Down Home Country Cooking

Views: 578,307

Rating: 4.9422898 out of 5

Keywords: the hillbilly kitchen, bret and becky, potato cakes, potato pancakes, tater cakes, tater pancakes, how to make potato cakes, how to make potato pancakes, how to make tater pancakes, frying, potato recipe, depression era cooking, depression era recipes, depression era food, betty's kitchen, laura in the kitchen, hands that cook, phyllis stokes, mashed potatoes, side dishes, hot lunch recipe, mashed potato cakes, country cooking, Jesus, latkes, southern cooking, grandma's

Id: vZ0DKuicJ2I

Length: 30min 40sec (1840 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 08 2019