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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.