frying in oil question

[cimorene]

cooking potato pancakes. the recipe didn't mention temperature but said to fry them in an inch of oil. i've had it set on four (and then five when that didn't seem to be working) out of six on the electric range, and in an inch of oil, they're... disengaging. it's an oil sea littered with little tiny particles of onion and potato.

what temperature? will it help as wax thinks to fry them "drier", with just a bit of oil in the pan?

Comments

[phineasjones.livejournal.com]

i don't know actual temperatures but the oil should be very, very hot - give it a good long while to heat. and then throw something in before you put in the pancakes - the first thing in doesn't fry as well (some chemical reason) so put in something you don't care about (a piece of onion or something), let it fry down and then put in the real stuff.

all that said, i've made potato pancakes before and an inch seems a bit excessive.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

thank you <3

they looked wrong and took a long time cause i'm so inexpert. but they tasted great.

we didn't use an inch of oil. don't worry. :) and it probably wasn't hot enough in retrospect.

[apoplexia.livejournal.com]

Maybe you needed more egg and flour to bind them?

[cimness.livejournal.com]

that occurred to me, but i wasn't confident about experimenting with it, especially on such short notice. we proportioned them as in the recipe, but wax speculated that the variety of potato was different.

[apoplexia.livejournal.com]

That can be a problem. I find it's best to get potatoes that are as fresh and hard as you can. A lot of it depends on your recipe. Mine is basically: one potato, one onion, one egg, one (heaped) tablespoon of flour. Well, those are the proportions. The more liquid you can squeeze out of the vegies, the less egg you need to bind them, so usually for six spuds, I'll only use 4-6 eggs.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

i was in a hurry and didn't squeeze the veggies at all--partly because i wasn't really sure how to (or why it was necessary). i had to chop them in a little food processor, not having time to grate them by hand, and gosh, there was a LOT of batter. the recipe was for ten potatoes and three eggs, actually, so that proportion's way off.

[apoplexia.livejournal.com]

Chopping the vegies in a food processor is okay (although if you can grate them in one it's better), but it is imperative that you squeeze out as much liquid as possible. The best way (I've found) to do this is to stick the grated vegies in a sieve, put it in the sink, and press down as hard as you can with your fists. I assume that the more liquid there is in them, the more water there is to evaporate when you stick them in the oil, which reduces the temperature significantly, and will stop them being as crispy as they could. In any case, I find that it's best to have a batter that's quite thick, don't worry too much about proportions, worry about getting a mix with the flour and eggs that you can get to slide off a spoon in one piece. I've never tested that, but it sounds about right to me.

Although I was looking at the Reibekuechen in the xmas markets here, and I noticed that they use a very sloppy mixture and do fry them in about an inch of oil. Theirs are always greasy and gross though.