Happy Hanukkah! Foley Potato Latkes

We love a good Latke and Hanukkah always seems like the best time of the year to fire up the skillet and crank out some potato pancakes in honor of our Jewish friends. This recipe makes about six latkes, which is all we need.

Ingredients
2  Idaho baking potatoes
1 medium Vidalia, onion (or a sweet onion)
2 large eggs
1/4 cup fine plain dried breadcrumbs
1/2  teaspoon kosher salt or sea salt. We go light on the salt and just grind in a few turns on our sea salt shaker.
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons margarine (we use Earth Balance soy margarine)
2-4 tablespoon vegetable oil (we use canola)
Applesauce
Sour cream

Preparation
Preheat oven to 325°. Peel potatoes. Using the large holes of a box grater or the grater disk on a food processor, grate potatoes and onions.

Whisk eggs, breadcrumbs, salt, baking powder, and pepper in a medium bowl to blend. Add potato mixture till the texture feels right. You may have some left over potato/onion mix depending on the size of you potatos. Using your fingers, mix until well coated. (Latke mixture should be wet and thick, not soupy.) Put a wire rack inside a baking sheet. We cover the baking sheet with aluminum foil for easy cleanup. Heat up a skillet with the margarine and oil, it should be about 1/8″ thick. Get it nice and hot, but not smoking.

Form a handful of the potato mixture (like a tight snowball), and put it into the pan. Flatten it out with a spatchula.  Cook till well done, just past a golden brown. Flip and cook the other side the same. We do 3 at a time. Use a spatchula to pull them off and place them on the wire rack and stick them in the oven. Fry up the next three. By the time the second batch is done, the first set in the oven are ready to eat. Pull them out, plate and put the second batch in the oven. At this point we sit down to eat dinner and just shut the oven off and let the second batch cook in remaining oven heat.

Serve warm latkes with applesauce and sour cream. This is a MUST! You don’t need much, just a tablespoon of each at a minimum will do, but it just isn’t the same without the applesauce and sour cream.

Usually we end up eating one more latke from the second batch (they’re SOOO GOOD) and then saving the last two for breakfast the next day. But if you’re serving dinner for 4-6 people, you’ll eat them all. You could easily adjust this recipe to just use one potato, or a dozen, depending on the size you need. The key is that your mixture should be semi-firm and not too liquid, keep your cooking temps high to avoid making a greasy mess, and don’t serve straight from the pan. The oven/wire rack cooking part helps crisp them up and lets excess oil drip off. This is important. Falling short of that, make sure you put them on a plate with paper towels to wick off the grease. But really, you need to do the oven thing. We did paper towels for years, but it wasn’t until we baked them on a wire rack that we finally cooked the perfect latke.

Serving suggestions: We like to serve these with our 5-thing salmon and petite peas.