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There is nothing better than a hot crisp homemade latke to celebrate the Festival of Oil… err, Lights.
Each year, Hanukkah rekindles a long-standing debate inside the tribe—to hand-grate or to use the food processor? I’ll proudly tell you that I’ve always been a hand-grater, ever since my grandma taught me how to turn a few potatoes and an onion into latkes. Because of that, I’ll admit that seeing a food processor on the counter at Hanukkah used to bring out my judgmental side.
Now, I have a slightly different opinion because a few years ago I discovered the most amazing hack for making latkes. This trick makes them indistinguishable from the crispy-on-the-outside-fluffy-on-the-inside pillows of potato that my grandma brought over from Poland.
It’s all about using the wet-chop method with my amazing Vitamix blender. You can use this method with any recipe and cut your hand-grating prep time by about 75 percent.
Here’s how it goes:
1. Cut up your potatoes into chunks.
2. Cut up an onion into similar size chunks (The ratio of potato to onion should follow your Bubbie’s recipe).
3. Drop your potato and onion chunks into your high-powered blender.
4. Fill it up with water to cover the chunks.
5. Start it on low and increase the speed to chop it all up for about 15-40 seconds, depending on how much you added, and the speed of your blender.
6. Pour it all out into a fine mesh strainer or through cheese cloth, letting all of the water run down the drain.
7. Add in your egg, matzo meal, flour, seasoning—again whatever your recipe calls for.
8. Fry, Mamaleh, fry!
Remember that if all else fails—there’s always Trader Joe’s Latkes, maybe not homemade, but they consistently take the bronze!
Link to how to wet-chop in a VitaMix