Savory Sweet Potato Pancakes
By: Sammi Haber Brondo | NYC Dietitian
Who doesn’t love sweet potatoes?! While these Sweet Potato Pancakes are a twist on a traditional potato pancake, or latke, usually served at holiday time, honestly, these are good any time of year.
I have a similar recipe in The Essential Vegetable Cookbook for Beet Latkes. Over Thanksgiving this year, my sister in law hosted the holiday and requested I make sweet potatoes latkes. At first thought, I figured I’d need to Google a recipe for sweet potato latkes. Soon enough, I realized I could pretty much just replace the beets with sweet potatoes in my beet latke recipes (turns out, this was what my sister in law had in mind all long!).
If you’re unfamiliar, latkes are savory potato pancakes that are typically fried in oil. Traditionally, they’re eaten on Hanukkah, but I personally see no reason why you couldn’t eat these any time of year! Like with my beet latkes, the sweet potatoes in these latkes help give them a pretty, bright (orange) color.
The recipe itself is a little tedious, only because the process of shredding the potatoes and then batch cooking the potato pancakes takes a little bit of time. But, it’s not hard at all. And trust me, the end result is definitely worth the process.
Some notes:
To get the potatoes to a shredded consistency, you can also grate them using a box grater. This method probably gives you a more traditional latke consistency, but is also more time consuming. I prefer using a food processor because it helps to save some times.
You’ll need about 2 cups of shredded sweet potatoes for this recipe. It’s usually about 1-2 large sweet potatoes.
While cooking, I usually cook about 4-5 sweet potato pancakes at a time. I like to line a plate with a paper towel and place the cooked potato pancakes on the paper towel. Then I add another paper towel on top of that, and so on. These mop up a lot of oil, so it’s an easy way to keep the flavor but make them a little less unappetizing-ly greasy.
Once mixed, the mixture will be very wet. That’s okay. If you really feel like it’s too wet and won’t hold up well, try adding more shredded sweet potato or flour.
I love these dipped in pretty much anything: applesauce, sour cream and mashed avocado are all so good with these.
Substitutions: any type of flour should work in this recipe. I haven’t tried with whole wheat, almond or oat flour, but don’t see why they wouldn’t work!
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Savory Sweet Potato Pancakes
Ingredients
- 3 Russet potatoes
- 1-2 large sweet potatoes
- 1 1/2 cups flour
- 3 eggs, whisked
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp pepper
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- Olive, avocado or vegetable oil
Instructions
- Peel all the potatoes and roughly chop into small chunks.
- Add potatoes to a food processor and grind until well shredded. Depending on the size of your food processor, you might have to do this in a few batches.
- Place shredded potato in a strainer lined with a kitchen towel or paper towels. Squeeze out water and add all of the shredded Russet potatoes and 2 cups of shredded potatoes to a large bowl.
- In a separate bowl, combined eggs, flour, baking soda, salt and pepper.
- Pour flour mixture into potato mixture and mix to combine. The mixture will be very wet.
- Add a generous amount of oil to large pan over medium high heat. Using a spoon, drop large spoonfuls of batter into the pan. Use the back of the spoon to form them into a circular shape.
- Cook potato pancakes for 3-4 minutes on both sides, cooking in batches as needed.
- Eat immediately or store in airtight container for 3 days. Reheat in the oven at 300 F until warm.
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NYC dietitian: Sammi Haber Brondo | Veggies and Chocolate