Latkes are a should for a lot of Hanukkah celebrations. They’re additionally a labor of affection. Onion stinging your pupils, oil catapulting towards your forearms, family hollering from the sofa. So this yr, our take a look at kitchen requested: How can we make latkes even the slightest bit simpler? Recipe developer Amelia Rampe had the reply together with her ingenious Additional-Giant Latkes.
These skillet-size latkes might be made the night time earlier than you’re able to eat them so you may spend your vacation with family and friends as a substitute of caught on the range. However comfort apart, the recipe has a trick that may simply change the way in which you make potato pancakes from this yr ahead.
After you shred the spuds and squeeze out the surplus liquid, Rampe shares this good tip: Don’t wash the bowl. The pure starches, related in consistency to buttermilk, will settle on the backside of the dish. Saving that starch and mixing it again into the potatoes yields sturdier lacy-edged latkes.
What does this method accomplish?
Much like cornstarch, potato starch “can be utilized as a thickening agent or as a coating agent when making fried meals,” Rampe shares. On this recipe, the selfmade potato starch left within the bowl varieties a slurry “that can bind the potatoes collectively and also will assist in making a crispy exterior.” As a result of the starch acts as a coating, the pancakes will take up much less oil and, in consequence, turn into lighter and wispier in texture. A latke miracle!
This system may be acquainted to you already. Possibly it was handed down out of your bubbe otherwise you examine it in Joan Nathan’s 1994 e-book Jewish Cooking in America. Some recipes use simply pure starch and egg as binding brokers. Rampe requires egg and flour. And others, like Max Falkowitz’s and Rebecca Firsker’s, add matzo meal for much more physique.
What’s the distinction between this starch and the starch you’d purchase at a retailer?
“Retailer-bought potato starch is the dehydrated model of the naturally occurring starch within the bowl,” Rampe explains. To make the store-bought model, potatoes are crushed to launch their pure starches, then the starch is dried into powder.
So subsequent time you’re ringing out potatoes for pancakes, I encourage of you, save that starch. It’s the distinction between good latkes and nice latkes.
