Moist Potato Pancakes (Southern Living, 1980)

Audry gave me the choice of the Moist Potato Pancakes or the Potato Puffs which are both on page 36 of the 1980 Southern Living cookbook.  I have a confession to make - I am terrible at cooking potatoes.  I don't know why or what potato curse we have, but if a recipe says cook the potatoes for an hour, in our house - we make it at least 2.  An hour will just leave us with a raw potato.  Doesn't matter the time limit, what kind of potato, what you do to the potato - we have to double (or even triple) the time.  So, I guess you might say we are overcoming our potato curse?  Or at least, we're working on it. 

After some minor debate, Chris and I chose the pancakes.  Mainly because the puffs were to be chilled for one hour.... that is not always feasible on a week day night (and with our history regarding potatoes - that would just take WAY too long once cooked to then have to chill).  So, we opted for the pancakes.  It seemed the safer choice.

Even cutting this one in half it still made A LOT of pancakes.  We pretty much followed this one to a "t", substituting cornstarch for AP flour and adding some crushed red pepper.  I even used all of the salt and added some pepper to the raw potatoes (I kept thinking my grandmother, M.R., would be proud!).    

Notice how the recipe doesn't tell you HOW to cook the potatoes??  After much debate, I ended up just grating and cooking in the skillet.  I may have done it a backwards way, so please, if you know a better way - I am all ears!

Moist Potato Pancakes

2 med. potatoes, shredded and cooked

1 egg

3/4 cup milk

1/4 chopped onion

2 tbls cornstarch

1 tbls melted margarine

1 tsp salt

1/4 tsp pepper

1/2 tsp crushed red pepper

* Grate potatoes, add salt and pepper, and then cook in skillet until done.

* Remove from heat and add egg.  Gradually adding milk until almost batter like, not too soup-y.   Add remaining ingredients and let stand for 10 minutes.  

* Drop batter by spoonfuls in a hot, lightly greased skillet.  Flatten into a pancake and cook until browned on both sides.

The grated potatoes - pre cooked.  

The potato batter...

Cooking...  

Finished!  We had these as a side with chicken, but Chris had them by themselves for a late night snack the next night.  Very filling.  Very good.  Pretty easy.  Well, if we didn't struggle with potatoes, it would probably be very easy - but as it was, we came out alright.  These were, obviously, hashbrown-esque.  Perfect for the BBQ chicken we had as the sauce helped the potatoes.  Chris had them with ketchup for his late night snack.  All in all, not bad.  Probably not going to do this one again on a weeknight, but that is just because of our potato curse.  We gave this one 3 1/2 stars.

- Chery