We are going today to make our root vegetable latkes and, and you know one of the things that people often think, is that latkes are just potatoes. So, you know, let’s correct that myth.

People think that latkes are just potato pancakes. But that really was a relatively modern innovation. Only the mid 19th century latkes were made with potatoes. Before that, the latke took this incredible journey that began in Italy. And as the latke moved north, the different ingredients changed. What started as a cheese fritter, eventually fried in olive oil, became a buckwheat pancake, fried in schmaltz and poultry fat. And then we eventually start using other ingredients, turnips and other root vegetables, until we eventually get to the tuber we know and love - the potato latke. And so we really wanted to make a latke that celebrates this beautiful history of the journey the latke took.

Our root vegetable latke has turnip and parsnip as well as potato. And what we love about them is that they are a little bit lighter than a standard potato latke, have a little bit more flavor, a little bit of sour from that turnip, a little bit of sweet from the parsnip. And, you know, it kind of references all of these other ingredients in that journey that the latke has taken simultaneously. Of course, today you also find people making beet latkes. That's very popular. Carrot latkes are very popular.

Sweet potato latkes - People love those sweet potato latkes.

But this is my favorite. Well, let's make it. OK! Great!

So we start with these whole veggies. And of course, the one thing to keep in mind is that you will have to peel them. And, you know, people might not love to do that, but parsnips are quite easy to peel. So we're just going to start by peeling those parsnips, and we will also peel our turnip, I love this turnip, that beautiful purple color, but we don't really want it in our latkes because, you know.

Great. OK. And of course, the last thing that we will peel is our potatoes, because we want those potatoes to retain their beautiful colour. And once we start peeling them, you know, they're going to start getting brown. So if you're making a large batch of latkes and you want to peel your potatoes in advance, you can always keep your peeled potatoes in an ice water bath, a big bowl with water and ice, and that'll keep them from turning brown.

You know, one thing that's so interesting to me are the different spins on latke production around Hanukkah.

And I know there's a health food awareness concern around fried foods. And so people bake their latkes. But part of the celebration of Hanukkah is to fry things. It's literally, I was going to say, baked into the holiday, but it's fried into the holiday, and so if you bake your latke, you lose that crispness, you lose the smells in the house…

and so we really advocate frying your latke.

I know if I got invited somewhere and they bake the latkes … I don't know, I would be sceptical.

You will. You really want that. You want that crispness and you want that inside that's going to be a little bit, you know, a little bit more contrasted with the gooey, or a little bit softer and lighter. And so that's what a beautiful latke is. One of the things we're going to fry in, we're going to fry in our vegetable oil. But had we been making a more traditional latke, we might be using schmaltz. My favorite fat to use would be goose schmaltz, which is one of the more traditional styles of poultry fat. So I always like to say in Ashkenazi tradition, there is, just like olive oil has extra virgin, virgin, and light olive oil, in schmaltz you have this hierarchy as well. The best, of course, would be goose schmaltz. Then comes duck schmaltz and then your chicken schmaltz and…

Yeah, and, you know, this actually reminds me of a pretty, you know, a pretty common conversation that we have, which is, you know, that what is missing from our traditional Hanukkah meals these days, right?,we're so used to eating latkes, right?,

that's your centerpiece food, latkes, delicious! And then the other foods that we eat on Hanukkah: so, traditionally there are sufganiyah doughnuts, right? Everyone is serving doughnuts these days. And then chocolate gelt.

It's a strange mix. It’s a terrible combination. Typically at Hanukkah I get a stomach ache. I don't feel good.

And the more I learned about this tradition of Hanukkah goose, the fat that … you know, my own grandparents remember that they used to roast a goose on the Shabbat of Hanukkah, and then they would use the goose fat to fry the latkes. And that was the centre of the meal. And then there, of course, were other foods to go along with it, including a lot of pickled foods, which would then help you digest those naturally fermented pro-biotic foods that really counterbalance some of that heaviness in the goose and the latkes. Suddenly when I learned that, I felt like, oh, Hanukkah makes sense.

I know, I know. It's a struggle. A party where latkes and Hanukkah gelt are the primary foods is just, you know, it really is a problem. So, you know, we've been on this mission to really bring back the Hanukkah goose. And it's a tradition that has all but  been lost here in North America.

Ok, so I’ve peeled everything … you've already started. You know, we've grated a bunch of the potatoes, we’ve grated the parsnip, we’ve grated the onion. And now you’ve  just got to finish off some of the grating. Now, I did the rest of the vegetables in a food processor, but you insisted on finishing this off by hand.

I just prefer the taste of latkes that are made by hand. I like to hand-grate. Call me old-fashioned.

I will call you old-fashioned! You know, my grandmother always used to say that the secret ingredient to a good latkes is a little bit of your knuckle that gets in when you’re grating. Right? And there's the Yiddish expression, mache fleische fur latkes. So when you're when you're grating it by hand, sometimes you're making a fleische latkes because a little bit of your hand gets in there.

I like it. I really like it.

And, you know, I just want to make sure that, as we said, we're going to cover these vegetable shreds with water, with some ice water so that: A. we're going to keep them from getting too brown,

but also, we're going to start getting these vegetables … when they're in the water.

it's going to help collect the starch from the vegetables. And we want that potato starch. We're going to find that later.

But that's key element. OK, so you finish that off.

Also it’s really satisfying to hand grate.

I hear that.

You know, but not everybody wants to grate this much extra stuff by hand. You can make a modern, you know, twenty-first century innovative food processor. Well, you can do it this way. Yeah, it's great.

Wonderful. That's fine. All right, I think that's it, that was a giant, yeah, that was a very big turnout.

Turnout. Let's get all of it. OK, so added to our bowl here.

Ok, right, ok, so everything's been sitting for a while in the water, these vegetable shreds have been sitting a while, and we're starting to make a mess already. That's classic latke scene right now. Now is the step that you always say is your favourite part of making latkes. I mean, I always let you do this. Thank you.

I really appreciate that. So one of the fun things about soaking potatoes is that some of the starch is going to come out and we're going to actually harness that starch later on in the latke. We're going to drain it. We want as little liquid as possible in our batter. Absolutely. Because what happens when you fry with too much liquid? You're going to get all those bubbles. You're going to … you're going to get smoke. It's not going to be a nice frying experience. Always, when you're frying, you want to have as little liquid as possible. So we're going to try to strain that out right now.

All right. So what do you have over there? You've got a colander and there is a cheesecloth on the colander.

But if you don't have cheesecloth, you can just use a thin, clean kitchen towel for this very same purpose. Just make sure it's big enough. So we've got a bowl, colander, cheesecloth - perfect.

Ok, so here's the fun.

I'm going to pull this together. We want to squeeze that into this bowl. OK, so we've got all of our vegetables in there. Great, awesome.

And then you just sort of twist and squeeze and you want to get as much of that liquid as possible.

Yes, I twist, it puts more pressure and we're getting it out. Hardcore! it looks like a good workout.

It really is. It’s good for your arms. I see that.

Grating too – latkes. It's a lot of active time.

Exactly. You know, we've made pickles, that is about five minutes of active time and mostly just sitting there and waiting. And this is very active cooking.

So we have our squeeze, very dry, vegetables, onions, potatoes, parsnip.



Throw that in there. OK, now we're going to add a few more things to our batter so we've got some chopped green onions, colour and flavor. Love it. You can't have too many onions as far as I'm concerned. And I just love having that bright green when you fry.

Yeah, a lot of Ashkenazy food can sometimes be seen as just brown, so adding a little bit of green can go a long way.

Of course, salt and pepper. Kosher salt. Ground, fresh black pepper.

Basic, simple. Excellent. OK, we've got some flour.

Now sometimes folks that we know are gluten-free. They use a gluten-free flour for this purpose. Totally fine.

I know some people who try to go without any flour at all and just rely on the potato starch and that can work too. You might just need to change your quantities a little bit.

Yeah. Great. Ok. And then we've got some matzo meal once again, and not everybody uses matzo meal, and you don't totally need it, but we find it helps keep everything together.

These are our binding agents and we're making a pancake. We want to make sure it all sticks.

Ok, so I'm just going to start doing this a little bit. Coating, get your hands on all the pieces, all those shreds. But now we actually want to add some of that potato starch if we've got any potato starch collected at the bottom of the bowl. So I'm going to pour this out.

If you let that mixture sit a little bit longer, you can get more. But I can feel that that's great. I mean, there's plenty of starch in there, so let's scrape that in. 

And now, the last ingredient in our batter. Throw some eggs in there, do it.

All right, let's do it.And now we're just going to coat this. Now, I do like to do this with my hand, but it can get messy, you know. So let's just make sure all the batter is coated with all of our ingredients at this point. Oh, yeah, it's really smells like Hanukkah.

Yeah, it's crazy. All that, I just feel like, you know, adding the extra green onions, the onions, you just have some of those Ashkenazy smells right at the start.



Ok, nice mixing. Ok, I think we're almost there.

I just want to make sure all those dry ingredients get really nicely coated.

Ok, great, now we got it. Excellent. We are ready to begin frying. So first off, we have we have our oil that's been heating up … and it's important … I find a lot of people don't always use enough oil when they fry. They always are a little scared to really immerse the latke in their hot oil. But we want to make sure that we get the right crispness. And actually, I find that when you aren't using enough oil, you're constantly lifting and testing and adding more oil and then eventually your latke will be greasier than had you started with more oil in the first place. No doubt.

Ok, are we ready for the first latke. We on in.

Let's do it.

And so what you're doing there, you're squeezing out some of that liquid?

Yeah, I'm squeezing out some of this liquid so that, again, we want to put these in as - not as dry as possible, obviously - but we don't want excess liquid going in.  So I am squeezing an amount to form these patties.

And I'm just keeping an eye out, waiting to see the browning around the edges, I don't want to be fidgeting or messing with the latkes too soon. And, oh yeah, I’m starting to get those smells. Yeah. I Love it. It’s starting to smell like Hanukka in here.

Totally. One of my favourite things to do around Hanukkah is to throw a latke fry party and invite family members and friends over. And I just station myself at the stove and just fry latkes for hours. It's what Hanukkah can be, at its best, for me.

So, we can already see some browning around the edges, which is awesome. And again, we only want to flip once, so we really want to be conservative. We don't want to over-flip. Yeah. So it's looking pretty good, but I think we want to get it a little browner, a little browner.

This is really awesome. Yeah, this is amazing. OK, that one looks flippable but just to check it out.

Looks pretty good.

That was nice. Nice. Every stove-top has its hot spots, and I can see on this stove-top, that this latke got brown way faster than the other one.

So it's good to develop a relationship with your stove. You know, there's so many different styles of latkes, and I find that people really love one style or another. So I love a thin, crispy latke. But some folks like a nice thick latke that, you know, is going to be crispy on the outside, but very soft on the inside. So for me, I'm always going to go for a smaller, thinner, crisper latke. But, you know, it's a matter of what you like. And people, I think, are, you know … they get attached to their way.

That's good.

I can think of a deli latke as a thick latke, like ordering it as a side. And you want to be filled up from that latke. Yeah, I think I think we're ready to take the middle one also off here.

So you are using, I see, Jeffrey, a rack on a baking sheet there, so that the latkes’ oil can actually drain off.

Some people will put their latkes after they're fried on a paper towel, but then they're just sitting in the paper towel. So we find that if you can set yourself up with a little drainage system, that's really ideal.

This one I might turn back over. Ah! These are looking amazing.

Yeah, they're coming together here. I always … my mother always made a nice, thin latke. So I always … to me there was the thinness, it’s an easier, it's a lighter latke, but it also means you can eat more latkes, which is what I want to do on Hanukkah. I don't want to just have one big latke and be filled. I want to just keep going. And I find that with the root vegetable latke or sweet potato latke, it's less dense, less filling than a straight-up potato latke. So you can have more. So if you're going for quantity, this is the way to go. Yeah, we can just take these off. I think we can. I think we should do it. OK. Let's.

Something else that's really important is that you never want to crowd the pan, right? That's going to bring down the temperature of the oil significantly, and that you do not want. You want the temperature of the oil to stay nice and hot. It's also going to make it a lot harder to get your latkes out of the pan if you've got a crowded pan.

So, you know, don't overfill your pan. Latkes are one of the many Ashkenazy dishes that require patience. And it's worth it in the end.

You might think you're saving time by crowding the pan. But you and I know you're not. You're not.