This One-Ingredient Latke Hack Is the Product of My Utter Laziness

Anybody who’s made latkes is aware of that it is a course of with built-in ache. There are the tears shed over a noxious mixture of grated onion, and the inevitable bloodied knuckles once you’re attempting to get just a bit extra out of that final nubbin of potato. After which, to prime all of it off, comes the squeezing. And squeezing. And extra squeezing. As a result of everyone knows—we have all heard it 1,000,000 instances—you need to wring each final drop of unwelcome moisture from the combination, lest your latkes find yourself damp, under-browned, and (oy vey iz mir!) damaged!

I lived by these self-evident potato-pancake truths my complete life, till in the future a number of years in the past a lazy urge disrupted issues. I merely did not really feel like squeezing the potatoes till my fingers damage. And I certain as hell wasn’t in any temper to rig up a sack with a stick, to twist and twist it like a garrote till the potatoes had been compressed into dryness.

So I blithely squeezed my potatoes simply sufficient. After which I drew on my culinary information to deal with the remainder. When you’ve ever learn Max Falkowitz’s nice recipe for latkes, you will see halfway down the headnote that after squeezing the potatoes and onion and mixing in matzo meal and eggs, he harvests the hydrated potato starch from the drained liquid (after first letting it settle) and stirs it again into the latke combination, a step that improves moisture administration and the binding of the latkes. I noticed I may do the identical factor with the dry potato starch I preserve in my pantry. (Actually, you may most likely make it work with cornstarch too.)

The method goes like this: Grate your onions and potatoes, then squeeze them as a lot as you are ready, however with out going blue within the face or establishing any form of elaborate system to additional wring them out. Add your binders like egg and matzo meal after which simply sprinkle a bit potato starch in too, simply sufficient to bind issues up and absorb any remnant moisture you did not handle to squeeze out.

Now, I do know the subsequent query, which is, How a lot potato starch do I add? And I am sorry to say, I’ve no concrete reply aside from this: simply barely sufficient, however completely not an excessive amount of. I’ve discovered the laborious approach that if you’re not merely lazy however insufferably slothful—as I used to be in the future after I acquired a bit too cocky about simply how little wringing I may get away with because of this trick—you’ll find yourself in a really dangerous place. The truth is that dumping an increasing number of starch in a bowl of too-wet potatoes is not going to clear up your issues. As a substitute, it should make gummy latkes.

So consider it this manner: Do your greatest, attempt to get the water out. Then proceed as regular, solely counting on sprinkling a judiciously small quantity of potato starch into the combination as wanted to get a lift in binding and crisping.

Does this trick produce the best latkes of all time? No, I would not say so. However when your initiative is low, that is one thing you may benefit from to make them greater than adequate.