Hello, friends.
Welcome to Hilah Cooking.
I am a little bit hungover today from the Austin Blogger Awards last night,
so forgive me if I fumble.
I also thought that I might make some potatoes
latkes today, because they are good for breakfast.
My dad used to make them for me for breakfast when I
was a kid; I think he called them potato pancakes, probably.
Also it's Hanukah, so perfect combination.
Yay, potatoes.
The first thing I'm going to do is grate some potatoes.
This is a pound of potatoes; it'll probably end up being about
2 cups once it's grated.
I'm going to go ahead and grate it on this cloth,
so that then afterwards we can squeeze some of the water out on the cloth.
I'm going to flip it around and do the last little potato on the smaller
side.
Having some smaller pieces in there will help them hold together
a little better.
Almost done, hold on.
That's a whole lot of potato.
They turn a little brown because of oxidation, but you're going to fry it
anyway, so it's going to be browner.
I would say that's probably closer to 3 cups of grated potato, if you don't have
a scale.
I'm going to just throw this over and mash them.
Water comes out.
I don't want to rinse them off because I want to keep the potato starch,
but I want to get rid of some of the liquid.
The starch will help hold everything together.
That's probably good; don't need to go crazy.
I will mix this in the bowl with everything else, except the oil of course,
because that's for frying.
Potatoes in.
Oh Lord, they're stuck.
You can use paper towel too, but you know how I feel about
paper towels.
I just got this out of the dirty clothes.
Just kidding, it's clean.
Onion, one egg, minced garlic.
You can leave that out, but I like it, and some salt.
I'm going to mix it together with this fork.
I've got this, a little bit of flour here, in case we need it.
If it seems watery, you can add a little bit of flour, but pressing the moisture out
should alleviate that issue.
This looks well-mixed.
I'm going to let that just sit there while I heat up the skillet.
I'm going to get pretty hot, and then I use a lot of
oil, more than I usually use when I cook things, because that's part of
the deal.
About 1/4 -cup of oil, maybe.
Set them down and flatten them out a little bit.
The thicker they are . . . you want them thicker rather than
thinner, I think; they hold together better.
It's totally going to set that fire alarm off again today,
I think.
Sweet.
I've got this on high, but I'm going to actually turn it
down to a medium-high because I don't want the bottoms to get too brown
before the potatoes are actually cooked through.
I guess the deal with Hanukah, according to my internet research which is
infallible as we all know; something about magical oil lasted 8 nights
instead of one.
In honor of that oil, you're sanctioned by the religions to
eat fried foods for 8 days, which in my book's pretty cool: Donuts and
fried potato cakes, and stuff like that.
There's probably other stuff too.
That's, I guess, the traditional reasoning behind using so much oil.
You probably could do this with some spray oil
or something, if you're conscious of your health, which I am throwing
my health to the wind here today, people.
This smells really good, though.
It smells like frying potatoes and fried onions.
I'm looking forward to eating them.
I'm just making sure they're not sticking; everything's moving.
I don't know if you can see the cooking differentiation
here, this outer edge starting to look more yellow instead of white,
and a little bit translucent instead of opaque.
That's what potatoes do when they cook.
That's what you're looking for to know when to flip them,
is when the edges all the way up are starting to be soft.
I think that some of these are probably ready to flip.
Look at that golden-brown deliciousness.
Dude, that looks delicious.
I'm going to take that one off.
That one needs to go longer.
These are done; I'm going to take them off.
I have some sour cream and applesauce to serve with them, which is good and traditional.
I'm going to just cut a little on this plate, and then try one.
That's really good.
That makes me think of when I was a kid and having those
for breakfast with my cosmopolitan daddy.
I'm going to eat these.
They're very delicious and crunchy, and similar to hash browns, but better
for some reason.
I'll see you soon.
You'll see me soon.
Happy Hanukah, everyone.