How NYC’s Best Potato Latkes are Made

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Hi, I am Eli Sussman,

Executive Chef and Partner of gertrude's.

We're here at the restaurant in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn.

Today we're gonna be making the best latkes

that you're gonna ever be able to make at home.

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The latkes are one of our most popular dishes.

This is a dish that we're very proud of here at gertrude's.

We make hundreds and hundreds of latkes here a day.

We make several 1,000 latkes a week here at gertrude's.

We make them all by hand every single day.

I think what makes the perfect latke

is that it has a crispy, almost teeth-shattering experience,

a little bit chewy so you can actually taste the potato

on the inside and then the toppings,

some people like to go sweet, some people like to go savory.

Let's make some latkes and I'll show you how I do it.

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So, I'm using an Idaho potato.

This is what you can most readily find

at your grocery store.

These are really easy to use at home.

They maintain their starch content when they're fried,

and so you get that really crispy exterior.

Another thing that I really like about these

for making latkes at home is that they're big.

And if you're gonna be hand grating latkes,

a little teeny potato,

you're gonna end up getting your fingers too close

to the grater blade.

And the great thing about these is that you can hold them

and you can grate a lot of them.

I've got a box grater here.

There's obviously all these different sizes

that you can grate on,

and I'm gonna use this one, which is a larger hole,

but not the largest on the box grater.

You do not want your latke mixture to be pulp.

What you're looking for is it to have some strands,

it should have some texture.

This is gonna help give it the interweaving

and interlocking texture of what makes a perfect latke.

I think it's important to actually pay attention

when you're grating latkes.

You should really be looking at your fingers

while you're doing this because what you don't want

is little pieces of your skin inside the latke mixture.

If you're not comfortable going too far down on the potato,

just discard the end of it.

The potatoes are going to start to get brown

as you're grating them.

One thing you could do at home if you wanted

to fight oxidation is just a little pinch of cream of tartar

into your latke mixture that will help the potato

from browning too much before you end up frying it.

But a little browning is okay,

we're going to fry them very shortly.

The reason that I kept the skin on is, as you can see,

as you grate the potato, moisture is coming out, right?

The process of grating them is releasing the moisture.

It makes it extremely challenging to grate a potato

that has been peeled

because it's wet and it's slippery in your hand.

So, part of it is that I'm saving myself a step,

I don't have to peel the potatoes,

and also it gives me a really nice texture

that I can hold onto so the potato

doesn't go slipping outta my hand while I'm grading it

and I don't end up grading my hand.

All right, so we're gonna grate an onion.

This is a white Spanish onion.

We've removed the skin already.

You could use a yellow onion as well.

It doesn't really matter what onion that you use.

What's the most important thing

is the ratio of potato to onion.

It is not a one-to-one ratio

that's gonna make your mix way too strongly taste of onion.

What I like to do is a five to one ratio.

For every five of these potatoes that you use,

you're gonna use one onion.

Remember, the onions are going to burn faster

than the potato in the fryer.

So the less onion that you have

and the more moisture you get out of there,

the less likely you're to have a latke that's gonna burn.

It's easier if there's a flat edge

and then you can grate it much easier

along the side of the box grater.

There's not really any way to guard against crying.

You're grating an onion, you're gonna tear up a little bit.

It'll be over before you know it.

It's a very Jewish thing to incorporate crying

and pain [chuckles] into the dish.

So, these onions, there are some strands,

but it is a little bit more mash than it is like the potato.

That's totally fine.

I actually like that, it'll make it easier to disperse it.

We're going to mix it very, very gently altogether.

We're not actually trying to incorporate it fully

because all I wanna show you

is that at this point I have not added anything at all.

There's nothing in this bowl except onion and potatoes

and it's full of moisture.

So, I'm gonna try to get as much moisture out

of this potato-onion mixture as I can

before I add back in the wet ingredients.

We do that because when you wanna fry something,

you want it to have the smallest amount of moisture in it

so that we can get it extremely crispy or it will be too wet

and it will just end up breaking apart in the oil.

I'm gonna move the wet product into a bowl

that has been lined with a cheesecloth or a kitchen towel.

You're going to twist up,

and as you're twisting, you're even gonna see

that all that moisture is gonna come out.

A lot of people like this method more than using your hands

because they think,

number one, it can be a little bit more efficient.

And also then you've got all of the latke

and it's an easy way to transfer it to another bowl.

So, I'm just gonna keep squeezing and squeezing

until all that moisture comes out.

And as you can see, a ton of liquid has come out,

probably like a quarter cup of water has come out

of one cup of the latke mixture.

At this point of the process,

the biggest mistake that people are gonna make

is not remove all of the moisture.

So, you're squeezing this out

and you feel like you've gotten all the moisture out

or you're moving really rapidly.

And what you're going to see

is that there is still a huge amount of moisture

in this very small amount of the mixture.

So, this is the consistency that we're looking for.

You can already see that actually some of the potato mixture

and onion mixture is already like a little bit stickier.

It's still gonna fall apart,

but since we've removed some of the moisture,

it already will compact a little bit better

than it would prior.

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Now, we've got all our ingredients

that we're going to use to bind it together.

Some of these ingredients are going to give it flavor

and other ones are just gonna help it maintain its shape

when we fry it.

This step is an exercise in patience because remember,

you can always add more, but you cannot remove.

So, we're gonna add some egg.

Always make sure that you're cracking your eggs

into a separate bowl.

It's really, really challenging to fish out little bits

of shell from your potato-latke mixture.

I've got garlic powder and onion powder,

and I'm going to start by just giving a small sprinkle in

just about a teaspoon.

The onion powder is going to up the level

of the onion flavor in the latke.

So, there are different types of products that you can use

to bind your latke 'cause what we're gonna be using

for our latkes today are a mixture of Matzo meal

and potato starch.

I think that's gonna give it

a really, really crispy exterior

with also a nice texture throughout the latke.

Matzo meal is going to not only absorb some of the moisture,

but it's gonna help hold it together.

And then what you can see with the potato starch

is that it is a super, super fine product.

It's much more fine than flour.

What that does is it allows it to be incorporated

much more uniformly into your latke mixture.

We refer to the potato starch here at the restaurant

as one of our secret ingredients in the latkes

because it really holds the latkes together incredibly well.

I think a lot of people don't use that product at home

in the same way

that they don't necessarily use cream of tartar.

And these are just some of the restaurant techniques

that you can bring into your house

to make a really incredible latke.

I'm going to mix it all up with my hands

and then I wanna see what the mixture feels like

in order to see if this is going to be enough

to help bind everything together.

I can feel in my hands as I'm forming the latke mixture

that it's not really holding together.

If you can't really hold it as a actual piece of latke,

then you need to add more ingredients to bind it together.

So, I'm gonna add another two tablespoons of Matzo meal.

So, starch is the content of the potato.

This is going to make it so that we get a really uniform,

nice product that's gonna hold together.

So, it's looking good.

You can actually feel in your hands that they're sticky.

And what you're feeling that's sticky

is the binders altogether

and we're gonna salt them after they come out of the fryer.

So, now that I've added those extra binder ingredients,

it feels like it's really going to stay together.

A common mistake that people make at home

is that they do not fry one off

before you form the whole batch.

So, what we're gonna do is make a tester first.

Right now I still have the opportunity to adjust the salt,

to adjust the seasoning, to add more Matzo meal if I want.

So, I'm gonna fry one off

and hopefully it's gonna stick together.

Here's my tester latke.

I can't even tell you how important it is to make a tester

when you're making a full batch of something,

it's really critical to taste it

so that you can adjust the seasoning of it

before you go ahead and make all of it at the same time.

So, we're gonna salt both sides on the next round.

We're gonna pull them out of the oil maybe 20,

30 seconds earlier so we don't get those dark bits.

But overall, I'm really happy with the crispiness of it.

We're definitely cooked on the inside.

We're really crispy on the outside.

I'm gonna taste it right now

and make sure that I like the salt level of it.

I don't taste much salt, I work in a restaurant.

I like things pretty salty,

so I'm gonna add a little bit of salt

to the mix before I fry the next round.

And again, our texture was where we wanted it.

We just wanted a little bit of a pop

from that additional bit of salt,

and we're gonna form some more latkes.

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I love to have like a little bite-sized latke

and so we're gonna make about silver dollar size latkes

for this round, and we're gonna round them off in our hands

and just set them aside.

And I'm trying to really make them perfectly rounded

so that I can show you

that I can make really nice rounded latkes.

But if you want those little flyaway pieces,

those little jagged edges on the side,

you don't have to make them perfectly, perfectly rounded.

Some people like those little crispy bits at the edges.

Again, we're gonna get those because we've made them thin

and we've added enough potato starch

that these are gonna get super crispy,

but this is the size and the thickness that I like them.

But you can play around with them a little bit

in your home kitchen.

The latkes at the restaurant,

they're a really laborious process.

We always basically have someone either mixing

or hand-forming latkes.

We consider it in the same way

where if you were to sit down at a sushi restaurant

and get a beautiful piece of hand-formed rice

with some raw fish on top, that's the same way

that we kind of envision the latkes

that we serve at gertrude's.

We're trying to get them uniformly,

same size, same thickness.

It'll help us track and make sure that we get them in

and get them out of the oil in the same round.

So, we've got our latkes here.

They've been tested, they're shaped properly,

they taste good, they're the right consistency.

Let's go fry 'em up.

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Here I've got a short pot

and I have a really shallow amount of oil,

so it's only about three inches of oil.

I don't wanna have the pot full of oil for a couple reasons.

Number one, it's easier for less oil to heat up quicker.

So, if I need to move it off the heat,

it'll heat back up again quicker.

Also, I just don't wanna have to navigate

a very deep pot of oil.

It allows me to grab things out of the oil easier.

So, I've got a fish spatula right here.

This is a professional kitchen tool,

but maybe you have one at home,

if you don't, it's a great thing to have around the house.

It allows me to slide easily right underneath the latke

and then I'm just going to drop it in the oil.

When you're frying things at home,

it's gonna drop the temperature of the oil.

So, a great way to regulate the heat

would be to buy a candy thermometer

that allow you to really understand how hot your oil is.

Here at the restaurant we have a deep fryer,

it self regulates, so it always fries at 350 degrees.

When you're frying home,

you really want to keep it in that 325 to 375 range.

That's how you're gonna get

a perfectly crispy uniform fried latke.

So, you don't want them to crowd too much in the pot.

There's a chance that if they touch together right

when you drop them in that they'll kind of glob all together

and do a big potato hunk,

you want them to be their separate individualized latkes.

So, if you have a kitchen spoon or a fish spatula,

you can always reach in.

And once they start to get a little bit golden

and you know that they have a little bit

of a crispy exterior,

you can start to separate them and move them apart.

You wanna try not to jostle the latkes while they're frying

because the more you poke and prod at them,

the more likely they are to explode or to come apart

or to have you stab through them.

While you're cooking your latkes,

little bits might fly off the edges

and those little bits are gonna sink to the bottom.

They're gonna get too hot, they're gonna burn,

it's gonna actually change the flavor of the oil

and it's gonna give it an acrid burnt taste.

So, in order to make sure

that all the latkes taste clean and delicious,

you wanna change your oil while you're frying.

You move the oil off to the side, you let it cool down,

and then you heat up a new pot of oil.

So, these have been frying for about one minute.

We wanna give them about two or three minutes in the fryer.

Here at the restaurant, we do three minutes exactly,

at home because you know the temperature of the oil

is gonna be coming up and down as you add your cold latkes,

you probably are gonna have to give some of the later rounds

a little bit extra time

because they're gonna need a little bit

of that additional minute or two to actually fry.

So, I'm gonna pull one out of the oil right now

so we can just look at the status

while the other three are frying.

You can see we've got really, really nice browning.

There's great color on both sides,

but you still see that there are some interior portions

that don't have that golden brown yet,

which means to me that the inside of it

is not gonna be fully cooked yet.

So, I'm gonna drop that back in,

I'm gonna give it just one more minute.

When I put them in,

they were really, really bubbling like crazy.

A lot of the moisture was leaving.

As there is less and less moisture

in the product that you're frying,

you'll see the bubbles start to die down

and almost like dissipate.

These are can continue to fry.

And so they still are bubbling a lot,

but it's a lot less than when we put them in.

So, I know that just from looking at them,

they're almost done because they're golden brown

and they're not bubbling up as much.

You do wanna pull them right at the point

where they reach that golden brown

because they are gonna carry over just a little bit

once you pull them out of the oil.

So, I'm gonna pull these.

Again, you wanna drain off a good amount of the oil

and then let's put them on either a baking sheet

that is lined with some paper towel or with a kitchen towel

so some of that excess oil can drain off.

I wanna salt them right away

while there's still some of the oil that's still hot

and still liquified on the outside

so that once that oil dries and it evaporates a little bit,

the salt will have bonded to the outside of the latke

and it's gonna stick.

If you wait too long, you're gonna salt the item.

And then when you pick it up,

the salt's just gonna fall right off.

So, now I've got my crispy golden brown, delicious latkes.

They've been salted,

they're ready to be dressed or topped

or dunked in whatever you want to eat them with.

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We're gonna build our latkes now

and we're gonna do it with the traditional toppings

that we serve here at gertrude's.

When you're making latkes at home,

you're probably gonna be serving them

in the traditional way, which is with apple sauce

or sour cream.

At gertrude's, we have many, many toppings

that we offer during dinner and at brunch,

but probably the most common and the fan favorite

is the Celery crème fraîche with trout row

and then dill and chive.

This is sour cream, creme fresh, some celery salt, dill,

and it is just a really delicious, almost like a ranch.

Celery is a major flavor profile in Jewish cuisine,

so I really wanted to incorporate

that celery flavor into this dish.

So, we've got celery salt inside of the creme fresh mixture.

This is trout row, it's the eggs from the fish.

It's obviously extremely beautiful.

It has a really bright color,

but it also has a delicious texture

and it has a really, really nice smooth fish taste to it.

Next we're gonna put a sprinkle of chives on top.

This gives it some clean vegetable flavor

that is going to cut through the richness of the trout row

and the Celery crème fraîche.

And then last but not least,

we're just gonna put little sprigs of dill on top.

I love the flavor of dill.

I think it's really brightens this up,

and also it just looks really beautiful on top.

So, now we're just gonna plate them up.

You can get really creative with your latkes.

It could be sweet, it could be savory.

Here at the restaurant, you can get latkes

with locks, with smoked trout,

we make a pastrami salmon salad,

an apple compote that comes with sour cream.

We also used to serve them with maple syrup

and a maple butter with your latkes,

you don't just have to use the traditional toppings.

So, we have our finished latkes here.

They're nice and small on handheld,

they look perfect, they're ready to be eaten.

It's got that hot crispy latke.

It's got that really, really shattering crust

that you got bite through.

It's got some nice texture in the middle

of almost like not mashed potato,

but really warm, delicious potato on the inside.

And then the cold celery crème fraîche on the top,

perfectly compliments the hot lakte.

And then the trout row gives you

that kind of burst of flavor that really makes it

that like Jewish traditional latke

with a little bit of dill and chive on top

to just give you that little, little extra pop of flavor.

Latkes are a pretty humble dish,

but by putting a lot of care and love into it

and really paying attention to the process,

you can create an incredible end result

that is gonna be super delicious.

And if you want to top it with some special ingredients

and some luxury items, you can take a very humble product

and turn it into something incredibly special in your home.

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