My dear mamma used to be able to take the leftover mashed spuds and turn them into delectable fried potato cakes for the next day’s breakfast. I think she did something to them with egg and flour.
I have tried to replicate this DOZENS of times. Tonight I followed a seemingly foolproof internet recipe – mooshed the mash into patties 1/2 inch thick, dredged them in seasoned flour, set them in hot butter, and sauteed over a med-low flame for 20 minutes until a gold crust develops. Then flipped and gave them 15 minutes more.
Like ALWAYS, the patties began to turn liquid and ooze all around. Edible, but lacking in eye appeal.
My mashed potatoes are usually on the “stiff” side, not too much butter or milk, because they get served with a sauce or gravy. But when the cakes hit the pan, they seem to say “Hey! We have butter and milk in us! Let’s ooze all around!”
I’ve tried whipping an egg into them to keep them solid, and it never works.
Who here does a PROPER leftover potato cake – the poor man’s latke – and what is the secret?
The butter and milk are in them already, because they were last night’s side dish of mashed potatoes.
Onion always burns. I’ve put grated onion into roesti (a Swiss dish that’s pretty much a huge goyish latke) and I always get black bits of onion spread throughout the perfectly golden potato pancake.
Mix in the flour a tablespoon at a time until you get a bread dough like consistency. If it becomes to dry, add a drop of milk. Knead for about one minute then roll and cut into fryable wedges.
Add some butter to the oil, and cook them at a slightly higher temperature. Make sure it’s already hot before you drop them in. This should stop them sweating and breaking up.
I’ve never made salmon croquettes, but I approve of the concept. Last night, though, I really wanted a side dish, because I already had a huge beautiful rib steak ready for the grill. Adding salmon would have been…too much.
Didn’t work. I melted the butter at a high temp, then added the cakes and turned it down to medium low and gave them 15 minutes on each side. As soon as they warmed through, they began to fall apart.
Would you consider doing more of a croquette and using breadcrumbs?
Half an inch thick sounds very flat to me. I usually start mine more as lumps and I will gently smoosh them with a spatula as I’m turning them as well. And cold – are you starting with the potatoes cold from the fridge?
Latkes use grated potatoes-- more like hash browns. Fried mashed potatoes are potato knishes.
When I make knishes, I add an egg and a couple of tablespoons of flour to about two cups of mashed potatoes. I fry them in oil, not butter. It gets hotter without burning.
Instead of breading them, I stretch a really thin dough like strudel dough, or I buy phyllo dough and wrap them.
I also put a little Parmesan cheese in the mashed potatoes, but that’s not a typical thing to put in them, because most people would want to keep them non-dairy, so you are safe leaving it out.
I’m sure that since you are not trying to make authentic knishes, and are basically trying to invent a recipe, you could make a breading out of anything you wanted, but I’m going to suggest that you mix your regular flour with some corn meal, course-ground flour, or very finely ground bread crumbs. I think you probably want a thicker crust than what you are using.
As far as putting an egg and a couple of tablespoons of flour in the potatoes, it doesn’t make them turn out like dumplings. They are soft and smooth inside.
Cold, but warmed by my hands as I shaped them. My hands are like blazing wildfires, which tells you the status of my heart.
Do you mean to mix the crumbs INTO the spuds, or to dredge the cakes in them?
I’m sure that if I smooshed them, they would either stick to the pan or disintegrate immediately. I treated those cakes with tender loving care, and you see how I was repaid. Little bastards.
RivkahChaya: I know all about knishes (see “location”). Still very sad about the closing of Mrs. Stahl’s knishery in Brighton Beach. But making knishes is more work than I would put into a quick dinner side.
I love your suggestions, and will adapt them into an effort at “sauteed potato knish insides.”
Ukelele Ike, your problem is that your potato pancakes don’t have any binder. Mashed potatoes today are way, way, way too smooth, with very little in the way of long fibers to hold them together. If any liquid has been added (likely), they simply cannot hold shape when heated.
To bind the cakes, you have two options: external or internal. The concept RivkahChaya postulates uses an external substance to hold the potatoes together. If you don’t want to do that, you can try a much heavier breading coating, though from my experience that won’t necessarily hold the potatoes in. The other option is to put something in the potatoes to bind them together; hence the suggestions for flour and/or egg being added.
I had almost exactly the same problem the other night. Publix had a nice recipe I tried using the Bob Evans sour cream and chive heat-and-serve mashed potatoes they sell. The binder was cheese and sauerkraut. It wasn’t enough; the mashed potatoes were to liquid even with the binder to stay properly intact. I intend in the future to try the same thing with mashed potatoes I make, which are not uniformly smooth, and are much drier than most like. We shall see if the cheese and sauerkraut is enough under those circumstances. :dubious: