I come from a pretty long line of German and Polish cooks. I really love to embrace the food, recipes and traditions of that heritage. I get so busy trying new things, it seems, that I wander away from the food of “my people,” but this week I had a hankering for some potato pancakes.
And that is how the purple potato pancakes were born! You could make these with any potatoes you want, really. I just had some purple taters on hand, and went for it because I ain’t skeered. They were still delish!
Potato pancakes are like if hash browns and pancakes got married and loved each other very, very much and had delicious crispy tender potatoey babies. They are super versatile, and can be a main dish, a side dish, breakfast, or a yummy snack. They’re also known as Latkes, which is a Jewish version, but if you have latkes made around Passover they are made with matzoh meal instead of flour. Otherwise, mostly the same. I love to eat potato pancakes with sour cream and applesauce, which sounds weird but is fanfrickingtastic. These were a side dish for a nice steak.
The basic recipe for potato pancakes is AMAZINGLY SIMPLE. That makes it really easy to modify, tweak, season and flavor in different ways depending on what you like. The ones I made were mostly normal, except that they are purple and had green onions in them.
First, the most work you’ll do in this process is getting the batter ready. This recipe made about 16 2-inch potato pancakes.
- 3 eggs (I’m so excited to use fresh-from-the-farm eggs from Double R Farms!)
- 3 tablespoons all purpose flour (I used whole wheat flour)
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon pepper
As additional flavoring, I added:
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1 teaspoon onion powder (toasted onion powder from Penzey’s Spices)
Whisk this all together until it has the consistency of a thick pancake batter. Don’t over-beat it.
Look how yellow-orange the farm eggs make the batter look!
Grate up about three cups of raw potatoes. Include the skin of the potatoes, that’s where lots of vitamins are! ITS GOOD FOR YOU! Squeeze and drain the potato shreds if there’s a lot of potato juice when you shred them up.
At this point, I thinly sliced four green onions (scallions) and added them to the potatoes. Most potato pancake recipes include some kind if onion as an addition, from finely chopped shallots to thinly sliced onions. Leave all the oniony things out if that’s not your jam.
Here’s where I made a mistake during prep, and I am going to try to save you the headache I got over this — dont mix the potatoes and the batter together until you are ready to fry them. I messed up and got my cart ahead of my horse. When I combined them, I had about 15 minutes before I was ready to fry them up. The salt in the batter drew even more juice/water out of the potatoes, which made the mixture soupy. I couldn’t remove the water at that point, so I had to add more flour to thicken the batter again. I ended up adding almost 3 tablespoons MORE flour, making it twice the flour in my batch. They’re much better if you don’t have to do that.
So, heat up a skillet and put a few tablespoons of oil in the pan. You can also use butter, a mix of oil and butter, or I used homemade lard. When the pan is hot, combine the potatoes and the batter mixture.
Using a spoon, scoop the batter into the hot pan one spoonful at a time, pressing the mixture flat into pancake shapes.
The pancakes shouldn’t spread beyond the size you press them flat. Cook them over medium heat until the edges start to appear browned and crispy. Using a slotted spatula, carefully flip them and finish the second side in the oil. Mine took 3-4 minutes on the first side, and 1-2 minutes on the second side. Your mileage may vary because of my extra flour fiasco, so just keep a good eye on your pan.
My pancakes in this picture look a little batter-y, because of the extra flour I had to add. Ideally, you will be able to see the potato shreds clearly as they fry up golden. This will also make your pancakes crispier than mine came out.
As they finish cooking, take them off the heat and lay them on paper towels to rest. Give one of the pancakes from the first batch a taste for seasoning — if they need a little salt, sprinkle them with salt as you remove them from the pan.
Serve them any way you like, but don’t dismiss what I said about applesauce and sour cream. Because yum, and traditional, and YUM.
Happy taters!