Thursday, September 8, 2011

Easy Baked Potato Pancake / Rösti Recipe

Easy Baked Potato Pancake
Potato pancakes are quite popular in many cuisines and they go by a variety of names such as draniki (Belarus), Kartoffelpuffer (Germany), rösti (Switzerland), placki ziemniaczane (Poland) and deruny (Ukraine). There are many more names but a full list will not be particularly useful to you!

What makes these pancakes different? Generally potato pancakes are shallow-fried and contain eggs. There is nothing wrong with shallow frying and using eggs but I wanted to find an easier recipe that required less ingredients and attention during cooking. And I found a solution - easy baked pancakes. They are really easy to prepare, require just a few ingredients and they taste delicious. 

Using meat is optional. I used presunto da Pá Fumado (Portugese smoked ham). As a result the pancakes were salty with a strong smoky flavour. I think I used too much ham but that cannot be a bad thing.


I have also tried substituting potato with parsnip and the result was surprisingly good. However since no eggs are used parsnip rösti does not hold together as well as potato rösti. I added polenta and it helped. So if you decide to use parsnip and are not using eggs, add about 1-2 tablespoons of fine polenta.



Fish fingers with parsnip rösti

Ingredients
1 potato (finely shredded/grated)
¼ - ½ onion, finely sliced
1 tablespoon oil
1 clove garlic, minced (optional)
Meat, finely chopped (optional, such as ham, bacon, salami etc)
½ teaspoon spices (optional, such as curry powder, cumin, taco seasoning, mix spice, mixed dried herbs)
Salt to taste

Directions
1. Add all the ingredients to a bowl and mix well
2. Placed heaps on a greased baking tray and flatten to about 1cm thickness
3. Bake at 220 degrees until the potatoes are golden and cooked through, about 10-15 minutes. You can place the cooked pancakes under a broiler for 1-2 minutes to brown the top.

5 comments:

  1. Those mini Rösti look so scrumptious!

    Cheers,

    Rosa

    ReplyDelete
  2. I am so ashamed: I live in Switzerland and have never made rösti... There is only one thing I can say for my defense: they are drowned in oil (just like the Polish placki, even though both taste different ;-)
    Thank you for letting me know I can make rösti in the oven! It will revolutionise my Swiss cooking (which is non-existent now).

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sissi: I have never tried rösti but I have eaten placki few times. I don't know if the baked version is much different - it probably is but it requires much less oil.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Your rostis look wonderful and it would make a nice change for breakfast. Have to many potatoes right now so will be making them.

    ReplyDelete

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