As I was preparing to fry my latkes a few days ago, the annual question came up: What kind of oil to use?  Latkes, potato pancakes fried in large amounts of oil, are traditional Hanukkah fare.  The holiday is actually a celebration of oil, so there’s no escaping its use.  That’s fine with me; I like fat.  But I don’t like refined vegetable oil, the typical fat used for latkes.  I felt stuck. 

I wanted an oil with these qualities:

1. -High smoke point (discounts olive oil)
   

2. -Low omega-6 fatty acids (discounts most vegetable oil)
   

3. -Low in polyunsaturated fatty acids (more saturated or monounsaturated)
   

4. -Unrefined if possible (discounts pretty much any vegetarian oil with a high smoke point)
   

5. -A flavor that goes well with latkes (discounts coconut oil, red palm oil)
   

6. -Affordable in larger quantities (see above)
   

7. -Not containing large amounts of pesticides (discounts cottonseed oil.  ugh.)
   

8. -A vegetarian option, for those who didn’t eat meat or who kept kosher and couldn’t mix latkes fried in animal fat with sour cream.
   

You see my problem?  It’s hard to find the right oil.  And what kind of a mitzvah would it be to fill my guests up with omega-6 fatty acids if I could find something better?

For the animal fat eaters, I chose schmaltz, which is rendered chicken fat.  Judaism, as I recently told a friend, is built on two basic principles: 1) Treat other people the way you’d like to be treated, and 2) Onions and potatoes taste really good cooked in chicken fat.  The rest, as Rabbi Hillel sort of said, is commentary.

For everyone else, I chose organic high-oleic sunflower oil.  Regular sunflower oil is pretty high in omega-6 fatty acids/polyunsaturates.  But the high oleic stuff isn’t.  It’s refined, unfortunately, but it seemed like the best option. 

The sunflower oil worked well, as did the schmaltz, although cooking in schmaltz was very, very slow.  In the end, both fats produced crispy, brown latkes, which my guests devoured until they could no longer move. 

Stay tuned for the next post, where I’ll go over some basics of cooking oil more broadly.

Crispy Gluten-Free Latkes

Approximate ratio:

5 russet potatoes

3 eggs

1 yellow onion

salt

pepper

1/4 cup buckwheat flour

schmaltz or high oleic sunflower oil

1. Grate potatoes.  You can use the top grating attachment of a food processor for ease.  If you like latkes a little soft in the middle, pulse the grated potatoes in the food processor for two seconds, but don’t make the mistake of pureeing your potatoes in the food processor.  Add salt and let them sit a minute.  Grate onions.

2. Press the water from the potatoes and onions.  Mix together.  Add egg, salt, pepper, and buckwheat flour.

3. Heat oil, about 1/8” deep, in a heavy skillet.  When it’s hot, drop handfuls of batter into the oil and gently press down with the spatula.  When the latke is brown on the bottom, flip.  Keep an eye on the oil to make sure it doesn’t smoke.  When the latke is brown on the other side, remove it to a plate covered with a paper towel.

You’ll probably need to keep draining water out of your batter as you go along; the salt pulls liquid out of the potatoes and onions.

Serve latkes with sour cream and applesauce.

Thanks to yann.co.nz for the flickr CC photo.