{"id":2427,"date":"2010-12-12T14:32:22","date_gmt":"2010-12-12T19:32:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bupkis.org\/index.php"},"modified":"2024-12-29T11:28:08","modified_gmt":"2024-12-29T16:28:08","slug":"awesome-potato-latkes","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bupkis.org\/index.php\/recipes-2\/appetizers\/awesome-potato-latkes","title":{"rendered":"Potato Latkes (Jewish Potato Pancakes)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-5812 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bupkis.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/TerryMakingLatkes-210x300.jpg\" alt=\"Terry Making Latkes\" width=\"210\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.bupkis.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/TerryMakingLatkes-210x300.jpg 210w, https:\/\/www.bupkis.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/TerryMakingLatkes.jpg 651w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 210px) 100vw, 210px\" \/>The internet contains all sorts of potato latke recipes using all sorts of fussy ingredients.<\/p>\n<p>Not mine. My latkes taste like potato and onion. Like they&#8217;re supposed to. These are real, traditional Jewish potato latkes, from an actual jew. In fact, they&#8217;re better than traditional, since we&#8217;re going to use a little science to keep them from turning gray.<\/p>\n<p><strong>These are a beautiful golden-brown on the outside, white on the inside and taste exactly like they should.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Most of the recipes I&#8217;ve seen start with <em>one<\/em> pound of potatoes and claim to feed <em>four<\/em> people. This is complete nonsense.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re going to start with <em>seven<\/em> pounds of potatoes and this recipe will happily feed 8 actual, hungry adults.<\/p>\n<p>So, without any more delay, here we go!<\/p>\n<style>\ntable.normal-space tbody tr td {white-space: normal;}<br \/><\/style>\n<table class=\"normal-space\" border=\"0\" cellspacing=\"2\" cellpadding=\"2\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td colspan=\"3\"><strong>Equipment<\/strong>:<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>One of more 8&#8243; cast iron pans. The frying process creates a polymerized layer (&#8220;seasoning&#8221;) on the pan. You could use teflon or stainless, but then you&#8217;re left with a terrible cleanup job. If you use cast iron, the frying actually improves the existing seasoning.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Hand-held box grater, like what your grandmother used.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Food processor (could use the box grater, but it&#8217;s going to be quite a bit of work)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>A 5 gallon food-grade bucket. You can get these from any deli or grocery store. They&#8217;re used to ship pickles, potato salad, etc.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Optional but really useful: An infrared (non-contact) thermometer for checking the pan temperature.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<table border=\"0\" cellspacing=\"2\" cellpadding=\"2\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td colspan=\"3\"><strong>Ingredients<\/strong>:<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td align=\"right\">7<\/td>\n<td>Pounds (after peeling)<\/td>\n<td>Largest, cleanest, Idaho Russets you can find.<br \/>\nBigger potatoes mean less peeling and less waste and less time spent peeling. It takes twice as long to peel 2 small potatoes as one big one.<br \/>\nIf you can&#8217;t find huge potatoes, buy an extra two or three pounds, since you&#8217;ll probably have to trim quite a bit.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td align=\"right\">7<\/td>\n<td>Large<\/td>\n<td>Eggs<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td align=\"right\">2<\/td>\n<td>Pounds<\/td>\n<td>Large Yellow Onions \u2013 not sweet, not Vidalia, just plain yellow onions.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td align=\"right\">1<\/td>\n<td>Tablespoon<\/td>\n<td>Kosher Salt<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td align=\"right\">2<\/td>\n<td>Cups<\/td>\n<td>All Purpose Flour. On Passover you can used <a class=\"ingredients-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bupkis.org\/index.php\/recipes-2\/soups-2\/matzoh-meal-recipe-how-to-make-matzoh-meal\">matzoh meal<\/a>.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td align=\"right\"><\/td>\n<td><\/td>\n<td>Peanut or Canola Oil for frying. You&#8217;ll probably need much less than a quart, but get an extra bottle anyway. You don&#8217;t want to run out.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p><strong>Preparation:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Fill the 5 gallon bucket with cold water.<\/li>\n<li>Peel the potatoes, remove any green, any eyes and anything that isn&#8217;t clean white potato. As you finish each one, toss into the bucket to prevent browning while you peel the rest.<br \/>\nIf you find there&#8217;s a lot of green or a lot of eyes or rot, bring them back to the store, get your money back and go buy more at a place that sells a LOT of potatoes in big sacks, like Sams&#8217;s Club or BJs.<\/li>\n<li>Slice the whole, peeled potatoes into quarters the long way and toss back into the bucket.<\/li>\n<li>Peel the onions and slice in half. Grate on a box grater. If you have a vent hood over your stove, and it actually vents outside, grate under the vent hood. This will completely eliminate tears.<\/li>\n<li>Run each potato wedge vertically through a food processor with the &#8220;grating&#8221; blade installed and return the shreds to the bucket of cold water. The orientation is important. If you do them horizontally, you&#8217;ll get shreds that are too long.<\/li>\n<li>Drain the potatoes, dump into a clean white towel and twist into a ball and squeeze them for all you&#8217;re worth. Get out every bit of liquid you can. Dump out the water from the bucket and rinse it.<\/li>\n<li>Put the eggs in the bucket and whisk. Mix in the potatoes, onions, salt and flour and mix well with your hands.<\/li>\n<li>If you&#8217;re not going to use immediately, put in a zip-top bag, squeeze out all the air and refrigerate.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>NB.<\/strong> I know it sounds weird to do the potatoes in the processor and the onions by hand, however it makes a big difference. The box grater makes smaller bits than the food processor and loses less onion liquid, and will produce better latkes.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Cooking:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Take a small sheet pan and place a cooling rack in it, and place in a 275\u00b0 oven.<\/li>\n<li>Place about a 1\/2&#8243; of oil in a large heavy pan and heat on medium high until a thermometer reads 375\u00b0F.<\/li>\n<li>Use a one-quarter cup measure, pack tightly with the potato mixture, and carefully drop into hot oil. Press down to flatten to about one-third of an inch thickness. <strong>Don&#8217;t crowd the pan.<\/strong> When the edges just turn brown,\u00a0 flip the latke over and cook the other side until brown.<\/li>\n<li>Test one (taste it!) if the inside isn&#8217;t cooked enough and the outside is already brown, you&#8217;ll need to reduce the heat a little because it&#8217;s cooking too fast.<\/li>\n<li>As each pancake is done, place on the wire rack in a sheet pan in the oven.<\/li>\n<li>Serve with sour-cream and sugar, or apple-sauce.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Makes about 24 big, awesome latkes and easily feeds 8 people.<\/p>\n<p>Come back and leave a note if you liked it (or not!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The internet contains all sorts of potato latke recipes using all sorts of fussy ingredients. Not mine. My latkes taste like potato and onion. Like they&#8217;re supposed to. These are real, traditional Jewish potato latkes, from an actual jew. In fact, they&#8217;re better than traditional, since we&#8217;re going to use a little science to keep &#8230; <a title=\"Potato Latkes (Jewish Potato Pancakes)\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bupkis.org\/index.php\/recipes-2\/appetizers\/awesome-potato-latkes\" aria-label=\"Read more about Potato Latkes (Jewish Potato Pancakes)\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":583,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2427","page","type-page","status-publish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bupkis.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bupkis.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bupkis.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bupkis.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bupkis.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2427"}],"version-history":[{"count":80,"href":"https:\/\/www.bupkis.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6053,"href":"https:\/\/www.bupkis.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2427\/revisions\/6053"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bupkis.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bupkis.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}