What Goes Well With Potato Pancakes?

Potato pancakes, or latkes, the traditional Eastern European dish for Hannukah, are intensely personal. How to grind the potatoes, how much to drain them, how much oil to use; how much, if any, “filler” to help them stick together. All of these things are subjects of debate, even with a relatively simple recipe.

1. I’ll leave you to figure out the style you like.
2. Let’s focus on what to serve with the latkes.
3. Some families make a beef brisket, the go-to meal for any Jewish holiday but, in my family, we make the meal all about the latkes, so I fill it out with accompaniments.
4. The first two here are the most traditional.

A number of the others kind of spin off the ingredients of the pancakes or off of other elements of Jewish cuisine. Applesauce: This is the usual accompaniment to potato pancakes, jarred or homemade. Combine the applesauce with dried apricots, cranberries or cherries.

• Cook briefly to soften the dried fruit.
• Horseradish Sauce: Mix prepared horseradish (or peel and grate a fresh root) with sour cream and chopped dill.
• Or mix it with some applesauce instead.
• Roasted Beets: Wrap them individually in foil.
• After roasting at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 20 minutes or so, the skins will slip off.

Served sliced.

What does potato pancakes go with?

The most traditional side dishes for potato pancakes are applesauce and sour cream. They work well for breakfast as a base for eggs benedict or topped with lox and cream cheese. And you can also serve them with mains like goulash, pulled pork, or beer soup.

What can I top latkes with?

Breakfast Whenever: Top latkes with smoked salmon, cream cheese or sour cream, and a sprinkle of chives, and you’ve got a holiday breakfast. Try waffling your potato pancakes for less mess and more crunch!

What is the difference between potato pancakes and potato latkes?

Look – Potato pancakes are more rounded than potato latkes and you can make them uniform more easily. On the other hand, potato latkes are also rounded, but you’ll notice shredded pieces of potato sticking out here and there. Finally, potato pancakes are thinner, while potato latkes are thicker.

What country do latkes come from?

In 1927, when the word “latke” made its English debut, The American Mercury defined the Hanukkah delicacy as “luscious pancakes made of grated, raw potatoes, mixed with flour and shortening.” Almost 90 years later, Jews are still frying the potato pancakes, and serving them up as a holiday treat.

The point of latkes at Hanukkah is not the potato but the oil,” Joan Nathan explained to her readers in The New York Times this year. “What matters is the recounting of the miracle of one night’s oil lasting eight nights in the temple over 2,000 years ago.” Each year, Jews throughout the United States mark the holiday by frying grated potatoes in olive oil, savoring a treat that is, as Nathan put it, “traditional, nostalgic, and crispy.” Or, at least, crispy.

Because there’s nothing traditional about the contemporary American latke. Virtually every element of it is a lie. Delicious? Yes. Traditional? Not in the slightest. Let’s start with the oil. There weren’t a whole lot of olive trees in the Eastern European lands from which many Jews emigrated to the United States.

1. In the Old World, the common cooking fat was schmaltz —rendered from chickens, geese, or beef.
2. And, in fact, the Mercury specified that latkes were to be “fried in schmaltz,” But on this side of the Atlantic, Jews soon began to use Crisco—memorably marketed as the miracle for which “the Hebrew Race had been waiting 4,000 years.” When shortening fell from favor, it was replaced by olive oil, allowing Hebrew-school teachers and pulpit rabbis across the country to connect the pancakes to the story of Hannukah.

Because if not for the oil, why are Jews celebrating the holiday by frying potatoes in the first place? Which is a good question. Potatoes, after all, are Andean tubers. They arrived in Europe in the 16th century, but weren’t widely cultivated in Eastern Europe for another 200 years.

By the early 19th century, though, they were a staple crop in the lands with large Jewish populations, most often consumed boiled or mashed. Shredding them and frying them in schmaltz elevated a dull staple into a luxurious holiday treat. But when the landmark Art of Jewish Cooking explained in 1958 that these were the pancakes “which the wives of the soldiers of the ancient hero Judah Maccabee hurriedly cooked for their men behind the lines,” it was off by a couple millennia.

One thing we know for certain about the Hasmoneans, heroes of the Hannukah tale? They weren’t eating potatoes. So what was a latke before the arrival of the potato? Still a pancake, but made from grain—most commonly buckwheat or rye—and fried in schmaltz,

That’s what there was in the early winter in those frozen lands, as Gil Marks details in his magisterial Encyclopedia of Jewish Food, But buckwheat and rye are northerly crops. How did Jews celebrate the festival before they migrated away from the Mediterranean shores? The latke, it turns out, has its roots in an old Italian Jewish custom, documented as early as the 14th century.

That, it seems, is where Jews first fried pancakes to celebrate Hannukah.

What can you eat with pancakes Besides syrup?

In my family, summer vacations mean two things: vacation homes near some body of water, and lots of pancake breakfasts. The two don’t always mix. Being in a family or rental vacation home means being away from the well-stocked pantry of our home kitchens.

So it would often happen to my mother—and now it happens to me more times than I’d like to admit—that she’d make a batch of pancakes, only to realize at the last minute that there was no maple syrup (and the grocery store is 20 minutes away). photo by Lisa Hubbard But my family learned early on that not having maple syrup should never be a reason not to make pancakes.

Instead, we got creative. We turned our jam into fruit syrup, or boiled berries with sugar until they turned into a sweet, warm sauce. Turns out there are endless options of sweet, syrupy things you can make to drizzle over pancakes. Here’s 5 of my favorite methods to get you started.

• Turn Jam Into Syrup This is probably the easiest, fastest way to get a delicious maple syrup substitute: mix some jam ( or jelly, or preserves, or marmalade ) with a splash of water in a small pan over medium heat.
• Whisk until smooth, adding more water as needed until you get a nice, syrupy consistency.

Reduce juice into syrup Simmer your favorite fruit with a bit of sugar and after a few minutes of reducing, you’ll have a thick, flavorful syrup. Keep it simple with just fruit juice, or throw in some fresh herbs while it cooks for an added level of flavor. Make a compote Almost any fruit or berry, fresh or frozen, can be turned into a compote: just toss it in a pan (chopped up if it’s big) with some sugar and a splash of water and boil until soft and syrupy. Blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, blackberries, peaches, rhubarb, cherries, apples, and pears all work here. Use Ice Cream Sundae Toppings Any topping you’d put on an ice cream sundae is also amazing on pancakes.

Can you eat pancakes for dinner?

Breakfast for dinner is almost a bi-weekly celebration of a near-empty fridge, and there are pretty much always pancake ingredients on hand. But if you need an excuse to eat pancakes for dinner, choosing pancakes with either a short ingredient list or a savory component easily justifies the occasion.

When should you eat latkes?

You say potato, I say latke. You know — the delicious potato pancake that nestles itself onto plates for eight nights of the year in December, usually during lively Hanukkah celebrations and dreidel games. However, considering latkes are so delicious, it’s worth wondering why this food is generally reserved for the celebration of Hanukkah rather than, you know, every day.

So, why do people eat latkes during Hanukkah ? (And in my family’s personal case, only Hanukkah?!) Well, there’s actually a ton of history behind it. It doesn’t matter how you pronounce the starchy vegetable dish (potato, potAHto?), because it matters most how the dish is mashed, hashed, or frenched onto your plate year-round.

But on Hanukkah, one occasion of the year’s bulging holiday calendar, there’s only one way to eat them — and that would be in the form of a potato pancake. And if you’re wondering why this is and you haven’t been to a temple service in a while — or ever — I have a little history refresher-slash-lesson for you that’ll make your mother verklempt.

• Or, you know, impress your Jewish boyfriend’s chorus of aunts (I’m speaking from experience here) at your first Hanukkah dinner.
• OK, so, let’s get started.
• In short, latkes are generally consumed on Hanukkah to commemorate the miracle of the oil lasting eight days in the story of the event Hanukkah comemorates, the rededication of the Holy Temple.

The oil lasting eight days in this story is also why we have eight candles to light on a menorah. The Nickelodeon Rugrats Hanukkah special did a great job telling the story of why we celebrate these eight days (DON’T DENY THIS IS TRUE), but if you have lost all memories from its 1996 airdate, I’ll do my best to relay a recap as to the part oil plays in this celebration.

1. Hanukkah, as a holiday, celebrates rededication to the Jewish identity after it was compromised by oppressors in 168 B.C.E.
2. The burning of the oil (the eternal light) for eight days by those who were escaping the oppressors is considered a miracle, because it seemed there was only enough oil that could burn for a single day in the Temple.

To celebrate the life of that ancient oil in modern celebrations of the holiday, we devour oil soaked dishes. The latkes, as we know them, are potato-based pancakes constructed of salt, onions, eggs, and spices of the chef’s choice. They’re fried in what seems like inches of oil — or sometimes even straight-up animal-rendered fat — until golden and crisp, and it feels as if beads of grease are oozing from your pores.

• In a good way.
• They are a delight and hands down my favorite holiday-specific treat.
• If you want to see these pancakes year round on plates — they’re perfect for every meal of the day and then some snacks — What Jew Wanna Eat has an assortment of spruced up latke recipes to try out.
• For this coming Hanukkah holiday and beyond, of course.

Now that I’m an adult, I can cook latkes whenever I want them to appear on my plate whether it’s in December or July. But I have to be honest and admit that there’s nothing like my grandmother’s oil-soaked version.

What is the best oil to cook latkes in?

Ingredients for Making Latkes – 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 potatoes, 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 potato-y flavor.
• Plus, peeling is a lot of work.) Just give your potatoes a good scrubbing under warm water, and they’ll be ready to go.
• As for the onion, I find that globe-shaped Spanish yellow varieties are the best.

They have some seriously funky allium flavor to jazz up the mild potatoes. The binder merits more contemplation. I use a combination of three binders: eggs, matzo meal, and potato starch. Eggs add wholesome flavor and 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 use only eggs as a binder, your neatly packed latkes will become a mess of eggy, oily hash 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 cracker-y taste 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 it’s 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 that way.

(And no, they won’t be too greasy.) If you use too little oil, the 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.

How far in advance can you make latkes?

When you’re making latkes, you can grate the potatoes up to about 3 hours ahead. They will turn pinkish brown, but they are about to be fried into golden perfection, so it doesn’t matter. As the potatoes sit, the will leech a lot of liquid; drain and discard the liquid before mixing with flour, egg, etc.

1. For what it’s worth: one year we made the mixture for to serve latkes to about 50 people.
2. But just before we started to cook, smoke billowed out of the fireplace and we had to evacuate the house! By the time the firemen came, declared us safe and left, our guests were very hungry and our mixture had sat for a couple of hours.

We will always ask ourselves if the latkes were better that year than any other because the mixture “rested”—or because we were all hungry by the time we finally ate.