Easy Potato Latkes (Pancakes)

Well. The Thunder are out of the finals, so I guess that means I’m back in action here.  My social media feeds have slowly lost interest once the East and West coast conference champions were announced. No one wants to watch the Heat beat the Spurs. For a second year in a row.  What was so promising in the first round ultimately led us right back to where we were a year ago.  Can I also just call attention to the world’s most illegal screen, courtesy of Blake?  I don’t even have a clever way of incorporating it – I just think it’s too awesome to NOT include somehow.

Any way.

I love opposite flavors, temperatures, and textures paired together in my food.  Hot with cold, sweet with salty, crispy with chewy…potato pancakes with a little apple sauce on top is pretty much all of that wrapped into one awesome breakfast.  I’d only ever eaten them in a restaurant but decided to give them a try at home. It was. Delicious. Smitten Kitchen never lets me down, so here is the recipe I adapted:

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 large russet potato (1 pound), peeled
• 1 small onion (4 ounces), peeled
• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
• Oil, for frying (Smitten Kitchen uses peanut oil; I used grapeseed)

DIRECTIONS:

1. In a food processor, coarsely shred the potato and onion. For longer strands, lay the potato sideways in the chute of your food processor. Transfer to a colander or wrap in a cheesecloth sling, and squeeze as dry as possible. Let stand for 2 minutes, then squeeze dry again. I would recommend getting really OCD and doing it a third time. It makes a difference.
2. In a large bowl, whisk the flour, egg, salt and pepper together. Stir in the potato onion mixture until all pieces are evenly coated.

   

3. In a medium skillet, heat 2 tablespoons of oil until shimmering. Drop packed teaspoons of the potato mixture into the skillet and flatten them with the back of a spoon. Cook the latkes over moderately high heat until the edges are golden, about 1 1/2 minutes; flip and cook until golden on the bottom, about 1 minute. Drain on paper towels. Repeat with the remaining potato mixture, adding more oil to the skillet as needed.

   

Tip from Smitten Kitchen: Latkes are a do-ahead-er’s dream. You can also keep latkes warm in the oven for an hour or more, if you’re waiting for stragglers to arrive. Cooked, they keep well in the fridge for a day or two, or in the freezer, well wrapped, for up to two weeks. Reheat them in a single layer on a cookie sheet in a 400 degree oven until they’re crisp again. Bonus: If you undercooked them a bit or didn’t get the browning on them you’d hoped for, you can compensate for this in the oven.

We had these for breakfast back in January (yes, still extremely backlogged) with eggs over medium and red pear. I was too lazy to make apple sauce, but I couldn’t have my latkes without it.  I had some leftover individual packs of applesauce from the Carrot Cake Cupakes I made, so I popped one open and mixed in some cinnamon and nutmeg. It was PERFECT. The only downside is that our place smelled like fries for a couple of days. Well worth it, I’d say!