How to Make Mashed Potato Pancakes

Mashed Potato Pancakes

I love any kind of potato pancakes, and I love them any time of the year. Around Thanksgiving and Christmas I am more likely to have leftover mashed potatoes, so my favorite potato pancakes during the holiday season are the ones made with mashed potatoes left from the big dinners.

It's quite easy to make mashed potato pancakes, and they turn out great if you know a few little tricks for making them. I'll start with the recipe if you want to ripe the info and make the recipe, and I'll add tips if you are making potato pancakes for the first time, or if you have had a previous fail.

Potato Pancake Recipe

2.5 cups of leftover mashed potatos
2 eggs
1/3 cup plain or all purpose flour
salt and pepper
other filler items to suit your tastes

Directions for Making Potato Pancakes

1. Mix together the above ingredients in a medium bowl with a fork
2. Heat 4 tablespoons of Crisco or cooking oil to medium hot
3. Spoon around 1/3 cup of potato mixture into hot oil in pan
4. Wait around 3 minutes or until browned and flip over like a breakfast pancake
5. Put on paper towels to drain off excess oil
6. Eat and enjoy

 Getting Mashed Potatoes Ready to Make Potato Pancakes

It's fine to mix everything at once with potato pancakes. I just pour all the ingredients on top of the potatoes at one time.

You can add all kinds of extras to the potato pancakes. Today I used chopped onions (about 2 tablespoons), parsley flakes (about a teaspoon), and Brady Street Seasoning (2 teaspoons) which is a cheese flavored seasoning from Penzeys which tastes great.

Other options that you might want to consider are crumbled bacon, chives, shredded cheese, and any favorite seasonings

Stir Potato Mixture with Fork

I stir my potato mixture with a fork, but it's fine to use a spoon. I just use a fork to get the items in the mixture evenly distributed. The fork seems to mix it up better.

Once you get thing mixed up, decide if the batter is too thick or thin. You want it like breakfast pancake batter but thicker. You may not be able to tell about the right thickness until you've made the first potato pancake or if you have made them before. If in doubt, try a small test pancake to check. It should spread out just a little but not a lot like breakfast pancake batter.

If the batter is too thin, you can add a little extra flour or another egg. Do this with a light hand. A little extra can make a pretty big change in the batter.

Usually the batter is not too thick, but if it is like cement mix, then you can add a tablespoon of milk one spoon at a time until you have a batter that will spread if lightly pressed with the back of a spoon.

Into a Hot Pan with Potato Pancakes

I like to use a cast iron skillet to make mashed potato pancakes. Cast iron heats hot and even, and it is very non-stick if you have seasoned your cast iron well (I need to add a post about seasoning cast iron). You can use any skillet you own though.

The oil should be about 1/8 inch in the pan. It's more than just rubbing a coat on the bottom but not enough that the potato pancakes are floating and getting oil soaked into the sides. Around 3 tablespoons of oil works in the 12 inch cast iron pan. You may have to add a little more oil between batches too.

Make sure the oil (and pan) is hot before putting any mixture in the pan. If the pan and oil are not hot enough, you will have greasy potato pancakes. I use medium heat on my electric stove. It is right before smoking and shows some tiny ripples (but cools as soon as batter is added).

You probably will want to tap the spoon of potatoes down a little bit, because the batter is thick. If you tap evenly around the edges, you can make the potato pancakes rounder and prettier too, although the way they look does not impact taste (-: Don't really press down, or you will make a mess. Just lightly tap, tap, tap.

Fry Potato Pancakes Until Golden Brown

You can flip your potato pancake once the bottom has browned. This takes about three minutes. Look for the edges to look a bit cooked and perhaps to actually see some browning at the very bottom. Be careful though, because if you see browning, you may have shifted over to the burned zone.

One way to figure out when the potato pancakes are ready to flip is to use a fork and very gently lift just a tiny little bit on the edge and look. I use a salad fork to lift and look.

If your potato pancakes are looking greasy, you probably are using too much oil in the pan, have the heat too low, or you have flipped the pancakes more than one time. Don't flip until you are ready to flip or take them out.

If the pancakes look kind of dry and go right to a darker color instead of the golden brown, then you probably are too low on oil or some kind of fat. This is when you add a bit of Crisco or oil to the side of the pan.

Once I get the first round of potato pancakes cooked, I like to add a little butter or bacon grease to the pan. Not much. Just a half tablespoon or so. This adds more flavor, and butter will give an extra nice color. It's fine to just use Crisco or vegetable oil though.

Make the potato pancakes small, or they will be hard to turn. I go about three inches from side to side. They stay really close the size that you put in the pan, since there are no rising agents in the batter. When you tap the batter with a spoon (when you first put it in the pan), then the pancakes gets a tad bigger around but not a lot. Just play around with this, so you will know how big of a pancake you can flip over.

Once you flip the potato pancakes, it takes even less time to cook the second side. I can't explain this scientifically. It's just how it goes. So, watch closely after you flip the pancakes. The little side lift and peek trick works really well at this point, since the potato pancakes are set and not as fragile as when they were first put in the pan.

Best Ever Homemade Mashed Potato Pancakes

Once your potato pancakes are cooked, put them on paper towels to drain. You don't really have to, but they stay crispier, and I think they taste better this way.

You can move the potato pancakes to a platter and keep them warm in an oven turned to low just as you would for breakfast pancakes. With the potato mix, the pancakes stay hot a bit longer than breakfast pancakes do. Still, if you are making a lot or holding them for dinner, then the warming trick works well.

Mashed potato pancakes are great plain and also with apple sauce. My son likes them covered or dipped in gravy. You probably have other favorite ways of enjoying this treat. Or, just get creative and try some new things. Worst case scenario, you have to toss a pancake (and - does it ever get THAT bad? LOL).

Enjoy your potato pancakes! These are very traditional and taste like ones great Grandma made years ago. Hard to beat tradition.