How to Make Potato Pancakes Like Grandma Used to Make (2024)

When you learn how to make potato pancakes you have a frugal, simple, but filling meal at your service for any time of day.

Potato pancakes are a frugal and filling breakfast, brunch, or meatless supper that highlights the root vegetables, winter squashes, and fruit like apples and pears that are seasonal and plentiful in winter. Your grandmother probably made potato pancakes just like these. While potato pancakes or latkes are a traditional Hanukkah meal, many cultures eat potato pancakes during the winter season, when potatoes are in season.

How to make potato pancakes and latkes

Potatoes, apples, carrots, and squash are seasonal and plentiful at this time of year. Many homesteaders have these foods in cold storage in their basem*nts and root cellars. Potato pancakes are a satisfying main course for meatless Monday, or a laid-back breakfast through the winter, and they are inexpensive to make all winter when these ingredients are seasonal.

Latkes or potato pancakes are a traditional meal for Hanukkah, the Jewish Feast of Dedication. At Hanukkah, they are richly deep-fried in oil. They bring to mind the miracle of the Temple menorah that burned for 8 days on just one day’s worth of pure olive oil.

But before I knew that, I was making potato pancakes for breakfast for my family since the first home-cooked meal on our honeymoon. It’s traditional for guests at Joybilee Farm to have at least one breakfast of potato pancakes during their visit. When I make them for every day, I fry them in a tablespoon of oil in a frying pan, browning each side till it’s crispy and golden brown. Although the ingredients are the same, the final product is entirely different. Try them both deep-fried or just fried in oil and see which way you like them best.

One couple from France that visited us, when they tasted the potato pancakes, said, “You make them just like my grandmother makes them.” A high compliment indeed!

I’ve tried making these omitting the potatoes and just using fresh zucchini or fresh carrots or fresh butternut squash and they aren’t at all the same. They don’t hold together in the same way without potatoes. So add the potatoes. Sometimes, in winter, I will add grated apples in the place of the grated zucchini, along with a pinch of cinnamon. The recipe is very versatile. So experiment and have fun with it.

Potato pancakes are good, satisfying, and seasonal food that will make comforting memories for your family, whether you serve them for a holiday meal or for an everyday breakfast or lunch.

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How to make potato pancakes or latkes

Yield: 6 to 8 servings

Ingredients:

5 medium Yukon gold potatoes washed and grated (not peeled)

1 cup of grated zucchini or butternut squash or carrots

1 medium onion, finely diced

1 cup of grated cheddar cheese

2 large eggs, lightly beaten

½ tsp. Celtic sea salt

Coconut oil for frying

Directions:

• Coarsely grate the potatoes. Place them in a colander and rinse them under cold water until the water runs clear. This rinses all the starch from the potatoes. Allow them to drain, or if you are in hurry, squeeze the grated potatoes until no more liquid easily comes from the potatoes. Put the potatoes in a bowl.
• Add the grated squash or carrots, onions, and eggs. Mix well. Add cheese and salt. Mix. The mixture should no longer be dripping with liquid and should hold together when squeezed.
• Heat 1 tablespoon of coconut oil or olive oil in a frying pan over medium heat. You don’t need a lot of oil, just enough to brown the potatoes on each side.
• Once the oil is hot enough to make a few drops of water dance on its surface, put a spoonful of the potato pancake mixture in the frying pan. Press each round of potatoes with the bottom of your spatula to flatten the potato pancakes. Fry on one side till golden brown. Flip the potato pancakes and fry the other side until golden brown.
• Be careful not to get burned by the sizzling oil. Drain on a wire rack, place over a baking sheet in a warm oven.
• Add additional oil to the frying pan, 1 tablespoon at a time, between frying the potato pancakes. Always allow the oil to get hot before adding new potato pancakes to the pan.

How to deep fry latkes:

Alternatively, you can deep fry them in 2 inches of coconut or olive oil. If you choose to deep fry them be sure that the oil is hot or they will dry out and become tough before they are golden brown. When deep-frying, the oil is the correct temperature if it sputters when the potato is added. Don’t allow the oil to smoke or you will damage it. Fry 4 to 5 latkes at a time, turning when the first side is golden brown. They will float on the surface of the oil. Remove from the oil and drain on paper towels.

Serve hot, with apple sauce and sour cream or yogurt. For dinner, add a side salad and ice cream or cheesecake for dessert. If you are serving them for breakfast or lunch – latkes and applesauce are enough to satisfy.

When I first learned how to make potato pancakes:

I first learned how to make potato pancakes when I was 12. I went to Sunday school at Renfrew Baptist church, in Vancouver, BC (Canada). Cecil Savage was the pastor then. I was alone a lot. My parents were separated, and my mom was living with a man, who wasn’t her husband. We were poor, and they were both drinkers.

Most kids from good homes, on the moral side of society, didn’t associate with kids with my background, so I didn’t have other girls over to play. But I had two friends – Lillian and Diane who I met at Pioneer Girls and who attended this Sunday School, so I loved to go to Sunday School and see them. My mother and her boyfriend were often drinking at a friend’s house on Saturday night and weren’t home on Sunday morning. I walked the two blocks to church alone.

One sunny Sunday in the spring of 1971, my friend, Diane invited me home for lunch, after church. Her dad was an officer in the Salvation Army and so didn’t go to church with his daughter and I had never met him. When we arrived at her home, her dad was busy grating potatoes and invited Diane and me to help. Diane had a younger brother, and he and her mom weren’t home that day.

Her dad chopped onions and Diane and I grated more potatoes and cheddar cheese. It was the first time I’d ever helped to cook anything. Her dad fried them all up and served up the sour cream and apple sauce. I remember that there was a lot of laughing and talking around the table.

We ate lunch around a white, spackle, aluminum, dinette table, on vinyl, padded, steel chairs (very 60’s second-hand style). I don’t remember the dishes or the table setting. I don’t remember if the house was tidy.

But I remember that it was the coziest, happiest meal I had ever eaten. I ate more than potatoes around that table, and the aroma, comfort, and flavour of that meal carried me into married life. I didn’t see Diane again, because within a few weeks we had moved clear across the city of Vancouver to South West Marine Drive. The next time I ate that meal I was a young woman with a university degree, cooking it for my new husband. What a gift potato pancakes are to a hungry soul!

Your turn:

Do you have a latkes story? Share it with me in the comments.