[Photographs: Max Falkowitz and Sam Soboliewski]
We're nearing Chanukah again, which means it's time to start arguing about whether it's early or late this year, moaning "I can't believe you threw away the pupik!," and defending your choice to not go to grad school so you can sit and blab about food on the internet.
Okay, so maybe I'm projecting a bit. Forgive me. It's a stressful time of year.
But amidst the nudging, nagging, and nebbishing of the Chanukah season lies something that mends all wounds and brings us all together. I'm talking about latkes, the perfect party food. And when you get the hang of them, they're a cinch to make.
That said, there's a lot of ways latkes can go wrong. If you're looking to step up your latke game, this guide has everything you need to know, from ingredients to equipment to technique.
What Makes a Perfect Latke?
A lot of the problems in latkecraft stem from a misunderstanding of what a latke is. To start, it's not a potato pancake. 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 whispy, lacy edges.
Latkes also aren't hash browns. Hash browns are all about deeply burnished crust, with just enough potatoey center to gain a third dimension and a little give. A latke's interior should be plump and slightly cakey but yielding, with recognizably rustic stands of potato intertwined with onion.
To put it in burger terms,* a latke should combine a pub burger's heft with a fast food-style burger's crust, the best of all possible potato worlds.
*And if we can put something into burger terms at Serious Eats, we do.
I'm going to ask that you bear with me on this definition. If you prefer your latkes extra thin and crispy or with creamy centers, try these and see if they change your mind. If they don't, I'm not going to say what you lovingly made for your family isn't a latke, but we're going to have to agree to disagree.
Ingredients
A latke has three main elements: potato, onion, and a binder. The potato part is easy. Don't get anything fancy—Russet potatoes are all you need. Russets, often called Idaho, brown the best and produce tender interiors, thanks to their high starch content. Some people peel their potatoes for latkes, but for the life of me I can't figure out why. Potato peels add pleasant texture and honest potatoey flavor. Plus peeling is a lot of work. Just give your potatoes a good scrubbing under warm water and they're ready to go.
As for the onion, I find yellow globe-shaped Spanish varieties are the best. They have some seriously funky allium flavor to jazz up mild potatoes.
The binder merits more contemplation. I use a combination of three binders: eggs, matzo meal, and potato starch. Eggs add wholesome flavor, fat, and act as spackle, sucking together ingredients of different shapes and sizes into a single mass. But eggs aren't enough to keep latkes bound together. Before and during frying, the potatoes and onions will give up a fair amount of moisture, and if you only use eggs as a binder, your neatly-packed latkes will become a mess of eggy, oily has browns. They'll fall apart before you're able to flip them.
Starch sucks up moisture like nothing else, and my favorite for latkes is matzo meal, which is nothing more than ground-up matzo (often, beguilingly, not kosher for Passover, the holiday matzo is made for). Matzo doesn't win any contests for flavor, but to me, a latke just isn't a latke without that slight crackery flavor that matzo meal provides. And it's far less likely to turn your latkes' insides into a gluey mess than, say, flour. Of course potatoes have plenty of starch themselves, and we can liberate that starch to help bind the latkes. More on that below.
Oh, and a note on oil. While not really an ingredient in latkes, oil matters. First and foremost, don't be afraid to use a lot of it. The latkes will cook faster and more evenly. And no, they won't be too greasy. Plus if you use too little oil, your exteriors will burn before the insides are cooked through. Second, as lovely as olive oil is, leave it out—it can't handle the heat for latke frying. Stick to canola or peanut oil, which both have high enough smoke points to fry up a mess of latkes.
Equipment
While our grandmothers probably fried up latkes with whatever tools they had on hand, we have the luxury of options. When it comes to tools to shred and fry your latkes, luxury is good.
Pictured here are my grandmother's cast iron skillets. They're between 70 and 80 years old, and they make the perfect latke (as well as the perfect hash or any other fried thing). Now I'm not saying you need AARP-member pans to make great latkes, but cast iron is a huge help. It retains heat extremely well, which means you won't need to fuss with the stove much to keep oil temperature stable.
I've fried latkes side by side in cast iron and stainless steel pans. Cast iron produces a perfectly even, deeply browned crust every time. Stainless steel requires, in my experience, continual adjustment to both the stove and the latkes, and the results are never as pretty.
I also consider a food processor essential, and not just because it's so much easier than grating by hand. A hand grater produces thin, flimsy strands of potato that clump together. The food processor's grating disk—and if you only use it once a year for latkes that's okay—yields larger, firmer, shoestring-like threads that give the latke toothsome heft and gorgeously lacy edges. That Acme grater may be more traditional, but a food processor makes a latke you can really sink your teeth into.
Setting Up (and Introducing the Greatest Latke Trick of All Time)
Now your ingredients are assembled and your gear is ready to go. When it comes to frying, organization and technique are your best friends, so set up as much as you can beforehand. Once you start mixing up latkes, your hands will become spackled with starch, and dried-up matzo meal is murder to get off cabinet handles.
Pre-chop your onions and set them aside. (Yes, chop, not grate—grating releases too much moisture into the latke mix, and moisture is the enemy of a crisp latke.) Put together a draining rig next to a serving platter; mine is a sheet pan layered with paper towels. Get those eggs out of the fridge so your fingers don't freeze come mixing time. And pre-measure your matzo meal, keeping in mind that it's easier to return extra to the container when your hands are clean than to pour out more with your elbows.
Shredded potatoes brown fast, so make that your last step. After you run two or three potatoes through the food processor, open it up and dump the shreds into a bowl lined with a couple thicknesses of cheesecloth. Why cheesecloth? Remember when we talked about liberating starch from potatoes, and how excess moisture is the enemy of a crisp latke? Well here's the solution, the Greatest Latke Trick of All Time.
When I first was learning how to make latkes, I was taught to press the potato shreds against a colander to draw out excess moisture into a bowl below. The starch collects at the bottom of the bowl, and after the water is drained off, it can be added to the latke mix. It's a neat trick.*
Except pressing water out of potatoes by hand is reminiscent of Moses being asked to summon forth water from a stone. But where Moses had a staff and God on his side, I just have two pasty arms and weak biceps. Draining by hand takes forever, and when you're done it feels like you lost an arm wrestling match to a potato.
Cheesecloth and a little physics hold the answer. Bundle the potato shreds in the cheesecloth and wrap the corners around the handle of a wooden spoon. Then, holding the corners around the spoon, twist the bundle tightly. As you twist, pressure will force water out of the potatoes with ease. Collect this water in a bowl, then transfer your dry, ready-to-crisp potato shreds into another mixing bowl with enough chopped onion to get something that looks like this:
*Okay, so the Greatest Latke Trick of All Time is more of a corollary. But who's keeping score?
After a couple minutes, the drained water will separate into a brown murky pool over a bed of pale, already-hydrated potato starch, which you can use for all sorts of fun science experiments. Or, once you drain off the water, add to your potatoes and onions along with eggs, a hefty dose of salt, and just enough matzo meal to give the mix body. It should be firm enough to form patties that you can pass from hand to hand.
Frying
I set up two skillets at a time with enough oil to come halfway up the latke. You want to fry them fairly hot; there's little risk of them overcooking. I don't bother taking the oil's temperature, but I heat it on medium high for several minutes before I begin frying. Put a stray shred of potato in the oil. If it bubbles vigorously within a second, your oil is ready to go.
But before you begin frying, make a tiny test latke to check for seasoning. There's nothing more disappointing than an underseasoned latke, and while you can make your latke mix by sight and feel, proper salting can only come from a taste. You probably need more salt than you think, and this test latke will help keep hungry mouths at bay.
Size is a matter of debate in the latke community. I like mine the size of a good pub burger, about four inches in diameter and one-inch thick. Two or three of those takes care of any famished diner as a main course. If you're serving latkes as sides or appetizers, smaller and thinner may be the way to go. If you like yours extra-crispy, smash them down with a spatula once you slide them into the oil.
Latkes almost ready. These will get flipped one more time to finish browning.
Give your latkes space so they don't form a giant pancake, and fry them undisturbed until they develop a golden crust on the bottom. Flipping is best done with a slotted spatula and a fork. Your latkes are ready when both sides are a deep brown and the crust is thick. But keep in mind that they will darken as they cool, and there is such a thing as too crispy (i.e., burnt).
Condiments
For reasons that escape me, many latke purveyors and eaters feel the addition of applesauce or sour cream is an either/or decision. My best guess is a lacuna between people of German descent and those of Slavic heritage, the former preferring sweet fruit sauces with their savory dishes and the latter considering sour cream to be a main course in and of itself. I say we breach the Teutono-Slavic divide and use both, and plenty of them. When used together, a latke needs nothing else to be a meal all its own.
I'll also beg you to make your own applesauce. It takes all of 20 minutes, is stupidly easy, and will taste better than anything from a jar. Good apples need nothing more than a pinch of salt and some time to soften to make great applesauce. Incidentally, applesauce is a fantastic next-day cure of greasy-stomach-from-too-many-latkes-itis.
Latke Variations
Now that you've mastered your latkes, you may start wondering about variations. How about potato-apple-turnip latkes? Sweet potato latkes? Ginger garlic taro latkes? The internet is full of suggestions for ways to jazz up and "modernize" the humble latke.
I'll tell you exactly what your grandmother would say. It's all mishegas. Some perfect things need no improvement. Go forth and fry with the courage of your convictions, and have a happy, latke-stuffed Chanukah.
Get the Recipes
Old Fashioned Latkes >>
Really Simple Applesauce >>
About the author: Max Falkowitz fulfills most of your neurotic Jewish stereotypes, and writes about spices and ice cream for Serious Eats. You can follow him on Twitter at @maxfalkowitz. Or let him post alone in the dark.
No comments:
Post a Comment