Best Leftover Mashed Potato Pancakes - CopyKat Recipes (2024)

FAQs

Why are my mashed potato pancakes falling apart? ›

Flour absorbs some of the excess moisture from the milk and butter that is likely in your leftover mashed potatoes, a main culprit in pancakes that fall apart. It also provides protein and starch that helps the egg hold everything together.

Why are my potato pancakes rubbery? More than likely there's too much flour in the batter or you used to much egg replacer. Too much of either one of those ingredients will make the potato pancakes dense.

There's not enough starch binding the latkes. Luckily, the fix for both of these problems is the same: add some more starch — ideally in the form of matzo meal — which will soak up that extra moisture and bind the ingredients together more tightly. Flour works too, but it sticks together and makes for denser latkes.

The key to perfect texture is to wrap the grated potatoes in a tea towel and wring as much liquid out as possible before mixing and frying. To keep a consistent deep golden brown on all the latkes while cooking, adjust the heat to maintain the oil temperature and avoid the latkes browning too quickly.

What can I do to keep the potato batter from turning brown? A: When shredding the potatoes be sure to add some acidity (such as a teaspoon of white wine vinegar or concentrated lemon juice to the water. This is one dish where doing the prep work the night before can ruin the meal.

Fry in an oil with a high smoke point

Vegetable oil or canola oil is usually best, because of its high smoking point. Latkes were traditionally made with schmaltz, or chicken fat, so if you have access to it, you should certainly add it in, because it does contribute to the flavor.

Baking powder makes pancakes fluffy. If your pancakes aren't fluffy, it may be time to get new baking powder. If you're making buttermilk pancakes, the key is in the reaction of buttermilk to baking soda.

Pan-fried to a perfect golden-brown, with just the right hit of onion, they're a simple treat to make again and again. Serving them with applesauce and sour cream is the most classic choice, but Grandma Blanche served them with cottage cheese, and so we always include it in our potato pancake garnish spread, too.

When you grate raw potatoes, you release starch that can cause them to oxidize, or turn dark. The best way to keep that from happening is to cover the potatoes with cold water, then drain them very well and pat them dry before cooking.

How do you store leftover potato pancakes? ›

Store your leftover potato pancakes in an airtight container (lined with paper towels to absorb the excess oil) in the refrigerator for up to two days. Reheat in the oven or in the air fryer.

Potato pancakes have a creamy, almost mashed-potato-like center, with a thin, golden, crisp exterior. Latkes, on the other hand, should have a deeply browned crust, with wispy, lacy edges.

Although many Americans associate potato pancakes with Hanukkah, they have more broad origins. They originated in the eastern European countries of Germany Austria, Russia and Poland as a peasant food. Potatoes were cheap, plentiful and easy to store, making them a staple and necessitating inventive potato recipes.

Potato pancakes are associated with almost every European cuisine and are referred to as a variety of names including latkes (Jewish culture), kartoffelpuffer (Germany), bramborak (Slovakia and Czech Republic), draniki (Austria), tattifish (England) and rosti (Switzerland) (“Potato Pancake Background”, n.d).

A common culprit with messy pancakes is a batter that is too thin. If your batter has too much liquid, it won't have enough structure to hold together during cooking and will run all over the pan when flipped. You can address this by simply adding more flour to your batter.

If the potato cakes are falling apart because they are too wet it might not have enough flour. Troubleshoot this by adding more flour 1 tablespoon at a time until you get a better consistency, the mixture should be somewhat wet and will have a slight stickiness but you also don't want it falling apart.

If the batter is too thin, or you have used insufficient eggs then you may find that your pancakes break up easily.

More on that in this potato primer, but for our purposes here's what you need to know: Floury potatoes (like russets or Idahos) have a higher starch content and are more likely to fall apart when boiled.