Weve rounded up our favorite traditional Hanukkah and Passover recipes from The Martha Stewart Show, which you can browse through for some kitchen inspiration this. These fantastic zucchini recipes include a summery linguine, a refreshing, chilled soup, a cheesy casserole and more. What is the secret to making great latkes We found that the starchier the potato, the crisper the latke. As for varieties, we tested baking potatoes the starchiest. F2016%2F9%2F13%2Ff9a24a1b-f3a5-46aa-869b-a7d29c384e88.jpg?w=740&h=437&fit=crop&crop=faces&auto=format&q=70' alt='Latke Recipes' title='Latke Recipes' />The Complete, No Nonsense, Slightly Neurotic Guide to Making Great LatkesPhotographs Vicky Wasik. Video Serious EatsWere nearing Hanukkah again, which means its time to start arguing about whether its early or late this year, moaning, I cant believe you threw away the pupik, and defending your choice to not go to grad school so you can sit and blab about food on the internet. Okay, so maybe Im projecting a bit. Forgive me. Its a stressful time of year. But amidst the nudging, nagging, and nebbishing of the Hanukkah season lies something that mends all wounds and brings us all together. Im talking about latkes, the perfect party food. And when you get the hang of them, theyre a cinch to make. That said, there are a lot of ways latkes can go wrong. If youre looking to step up your latke game, this guide has everything you need to know, from ingredients to equipment to technique. What Makes a Perfect Latke A lot of the problems in latke craft stem from a misunderstanding of what a latke is. To start, its not a potato pancake. Potato pancakes have a creamy, almost mashed potato like center, with a thin, golden, crisp exterior. Latkes, on the other hand, should have a deeply browned crust, with wispy, lacy edges. Latkes also arent hash browns. Hash browns are all about crispy, burnished crust, with just enough potato y center to gain a third dimension and a little give. A latkes interior should be plump and slightly cakey, but yielding, with recognizably rustic strands of potato intertwined with onion. To put it in burger terms, a latke should combine a pub burgers heft with a smash burgers crustthe best of all possible potato worlds. Im going to ask that you bear with me on this definition. If you prefer your latkes extra thin and crispy or with creamy centers, try these and see if they change your mind. If they dont, Im not going to say that what youve lovingly made for your family isnt a latke, but were going to have to agree to disagree. Ingredients. A latke has three main elements potato, onion, and a binder. The potato part is easy. Dont get anything fancyrusset potatoes are all you need. Russets, often called Idaho potatoes, brown the best and produce tender interiors, thanks to their high starch content. Some people peel their potatoes for latkes, but for the life of me, I cant figure out why. Potato peels add pleasant texture and honest potato y flavor. Plus, peeling is a lot of work. Just give your potatoes a good scrubbing under warm water, and theyll be ready to go. As for the onion, I find that globe shaped Spanish yellow varieties are the best. They have some seriously funky allium flavor to jazz up the mild potatoes. The binder merits more contemplation. I use a combination of three binders eggs, matzo meal, and potato starch. Recipe Contests on this page. Eggs add wholesome flavor and fat and act as spackle, sucking together ingredients of different shapes and sizes into a single mass. But eggs arent enough to keep latkes bound together. Before and during frying, the potatoes and onions will give up a fair amount of moisture, and if you use only eggs as a binder, your neatly packed latkes will become a mess of eggy, oily hash browns. Theyll fall apart before youre able to flip them. Starch sucks up moisture like nothing else, and my favorite for latkes is matzo meal, which is nothing more than ground up matzo often, beguilingly, not kosher for Passover, the holiday matzo is made for. Matzo doesnt win any contests for flavor, but to me, a latke just isnt a latke without that slight cracker y taste that matzo meal provides. And its far less likely to turn your latkes insides into a gluey mess than, say, flour. Of course, potatoes have plenty of starch themselves, and we can liberate that starch to help bind the latkes. More on that below. Oh, and a note on oil. While its not really an ingredient in latkes, oil matters. First and foremost, dont be afraid to use a lot of it the latkes will cook faster and more evenly that way. And no, they wont be too greasy. If you use too little oil, the exteriors will burn before the insides are cooked through. Second, as lovely as olive oil is, leave it outit cant handle the heat for latke frying. Stick to canola or peanut oil, which both have high enough smoke points to fry up a mess of latkes. Update With further testing and research, weve changed our stance on frying in olive oil. Its perfectly fine to use olive oil for fryingin fact, its a millennia old tradition among the Roman Jews. But, for frying latkes, youll probably still want to avoid olive oil, since the flavor isnt quite right in that context. Equipment. While our grandmothers probably fried up latkes with whatever tools they had on hand, we have the luxury of options. When it comes to tools for shredding and frying your latkes, luxury is good. Im a fan of cast iron for frying latkes because it retains heat so well, which translates into less fussing with temperatures once you start frying. Ive fried latkes side by side in cast iron and stainless steel pans, and cast iron produces a deeper, more burnished crust that I love. In my experience, stainless steel requires continuous adjustment to both the stove and the latkes, and the results are never as pretty. Grated on the left, food processorshredded on the right. I also consider a food processor essential, and not just because its so much easier than grating by hand. A hand grater produces thin, flimsy strands of potato that clump together and make for dense, gummy latkes. The food processors grating diskand if you use it only once a year for latkes, thats okayyields larger, firmer, shoestring like threads that give the latke heft and gorgeously lacy edges. That Acme grater may be more traditional, but a food processor makes a latke you can really sink your teeth into. Setting Up and Introducing the Greatest Latke Trick of All TimeNow your ingredients are assembled, and your gear is ready to go. When youre frying, organization and technique are your best friends, so set up as much as you can beforehand. Once you start mixing up latkes, your hands will become covered with starch, and dried up matzo meal is murder to get off cabinet handles. Pre chop your onions and set them aside. You can grate them if you prefer, but make sure you drain them thoroughly to drive away excess moisture. I prefer bigger chunks of onion anyway, as they brown better. Put together a draining rigmine is a sheet pan layered with paper towelsnext to a serving platter. Get those eggs out of the fridge, so your fingers dont freeze come mixing time. And premeasure your matzo meal, keeping in mind that its easier to return extra to the container when your hands are clean than to pour out more with your elbows. Shredded potatoes brown fast, so make the shredding your last step. After youve run two or three potatoes through the food processor, open it up and dump the shreds into a bowl lined with a couple layers of cheesecloth. Why cheesecloth Remember when we talked about liberating starch from potatoes, and how excess moisture is the enemy of a crisp latke Well, heres the solution The Greatest Latke Trick of All Time. When I first was learning how to make latkes, I was taught to press the potato shreds against a colander to draw excess moisture out into a bowl below. The starch collects at the bottom of the bowl and, after the water is drained off, can be added to the latke mix. Its a neat trick. Except that pressing water out of potatoes by hand is reminiscent of Moses being asked to summon forth water from a stone. But where Moses had a staff and god on his side, I just have two pasty arms and weak biceps. Draining by hand takes forever, and when youre done, it feels like youve lost an arm wrestling match to a potato. Cheesecloth and a little physics hold the answer Bundle the potato shreds in the cheesecloth, and wrap the corners around the handle of a wooden spoon.