German Potato Pancakes

Last summer, the girls and I attended the incredibly awesome Duck Tape Festival.  It was a great day spending time with my daughters, seeing all the Duck Tape creations, playing games, visiting the vendor booths and of course eating fair food! While I would normally choose to have a Gyro with my funnel cake and sugary lemonade, I instead opted for the potato pancakes one food truck was offering.  I hadn't eaten a good potato pancake in years. Most have been either pan fried mashed potatoes or tasted more like a hash brown patty, but this one tasted just like the potato pancakes my grandma used to make.  Lila tasted the pancake at the fair too and like it a LOT. Last week while we were planning dinners, and thinking about warmer summer days, Lila requested the potato pancakes like the ones we ate at the festival. I did some Googling, combined a few recipes and techniques, and came up with, what I believe is an amazing German potato pancake. Like many of my recipes these are super easy to make and just happen to be extremely easy on the wallet too.

Ingredients

4-5 medium russet potatoes, washed and unpeeled
1/2 cup yellow onion, diced
1 egg
2 tablespoons of flour
Salt and pepper to taste
Oil for cooking

Condiments

Applesauce
Sour cream

Directions

• Wash and cut the potatoes into cubes and place in a blender, along with the diced onion, flour, egg and salt and pepper to taste.
• Pulsate the potato mixture until it is the consistency of cooked oatmeal, checking frequently to scrape down the sides.  Be sure not to create a "potato smoothie" or your pancakes will be thin and grainy. If the mixture is too wet, add another tablespoon of flour.
• Pour oil into skillet and heat.  Drop a 1/4 cup of the potato mixture into the skillet and flatten slightly with a spatula and cook until the bottom is brown, then flip to cook the other side.
• Serve with a side of sour cream and apple sauce -- or if your kids are like mine, you can serve them with ketchup.

Servings 
12 - 14 pancakes

A Broken Oven Tip
In addition to the sour cream, another serving option is to top the potato pancake with bacon, cheddar cheese and green onions for a deluxe baked potato kind of feel. 

Lila eating her potato pancakes at the festival.