Placki ziemniaczane: Polish potato pancakes with crisp edges
Made from finely grated potatoes, squeezed of their juice with the starch recovered, so the pancakes hold together and don't soak up fat. Onion for flavour, one egg, two spoons of flour. Sweet with sugar or savoury with sour cream.
Your own work in that: 40 min.
- Grating and squeezing 15 min
- Frying 25 min
Step by step
0 / 6 done
Grate the potatoes and onion
Peel the potatoes and grate them on the fine side of a box grater; the onion too. Finely grated potato gives compact pancakes with crisp edges; coarse shreds fall apart.
Ingredients: 1000 g potatoes · 1 pcs onion · 1 pcs egg · 2 tbsp plain flour · 1 tsp salt · ½ tsp black pepper · 150 ml rapeseed oil
TipGrating the onion in with the potatoes slows their browning.
Fine grater, potatoes and onion
Squeeze out the juice, keep the starch
Tip the grated mass into a clean cloth and squeeze hard over a bowl. Leave the juice 3 minutes, then carefully pour off the water: white starch stays on the bottom. Add it back to the potatoes.
TipThe starch in the juice is natural glue. Thanks to it, 2 spoons of flour are enough and the pancakes are not stodgy.
Squeezing in a cloth, juice into the bowl
Mix
Add the egg, flour, the starch from the bottom of the bowl, salt and pepper to the squeezed potatoes. Stir. The mixture should be thick but moist. Fry straight away, as it starts weeping juice again.
Ready to fry, right away
Fry
Heat a 3–4 mm layer of oil in a wide pan. Spoon in palm-sized portions and flatten thinly. Fry over medium heat 3 minutes, until the edges brown, flip, and fry 2–3 minutes more. Work in batches, about 25 minutes in total; top up the oil when needed and let it heat up again.
TipThe oil must be hot before the first pancake goes in. In lukewarm oil they soak like sponges.
Lacy edges, time to turn
Drain
Set the fried pancakes on paper towel. Frying in batches? Keep the finished ones on a rack in a 100 °C oven and they stay crisp to the end.
Pancakes draining on paper
Serve
Hot, straight from the pan. With sour cream and chopped chives, with sugar, or folded over beef goulash, Hungarian-style.
Ingredients: 200 g sour cream, 18 % · ½ bunch chives · 2 tbsp sugar
With sour cream and with sugar: both schools at one table
Before you start
Which potatoes?
Floury ones: Russet, Maris Piper, King Edward. Waxy salad potatoes are too dense and the pancakes turn rubbery.
Going grey?
That's oxidation, not spoilage. Onion and quick frying are the best protection; a teaspoon of lemon juice in the mix helps too.
Without egg
The recovered starch is enough binder. Add one more spoon of flour.
Nutrition
per 100 gStep photos are computer-generated from the recipe.
