Reibekuchen

Also known as “Krippeltjes”

When you’re in doubt, just, you know, shallow fry something. Like German potato pancakes. Greasy, hearty, and easy to make. Officially they are called reibekuchen, and are basically the same as Jewish latkes, but in my mother’s family they’re called krippeltjes.

For about two servings, get yourself:
* about 300 grams of peeled floury potatoes
* 1 medium sized onion
* a hand (I have small hands) of oatmeal
* 1 egg
* oil for frying, I use olive oil, but sunflower would be best
* salt and pepper to taste

Peel the onion and the potatoes, and grate them quite finely into a bowl. It should be rather mushy. Fun fact, I actually have a special grater for this (pic below). Don’t worry about the liquid, don’t get rid of it. It’ll make the pancakes stick together. Mix it up a bit, and add the egg and oatmeal. If you feel like you need more oatmeal to absorb more of the liquid, that’s fine, but it’s supposed to be a little wet. Mix a bit more, and add the salt and pepper.

Get a frying pan, and heat the oil on a moderate flame. You need quite a lot of oil (hence the whole “shallow frying”). So we’re going for a good layer. Use two tablespoons of batter per pancake. You can probably fit three pancakes in the pan. Be sure to stir the batter before you put it into the pan.

Fry the pancakes on moderate heat. You want them to be cooked through, but not burned. You’ll know when they’re done, they’ll be nice and golden. Add some more oil to the pan between batches if too much has been sucked into the pancakes (because it isn’t comfort food if there isn’t a lot of oil in there). Enjoy with crème fraiche and chives, or apple sauce, or just as they are. Make to much? No worries, some people enjoy them even more the day after.

You can also vary endlessly with the recipe. For example, you can make them out of sweet potatoes, or add spring onion. This will mess a bit with the consistency though. Sweet potatoes for example are less “wet” and are starchy, so you’ll need two eggs to get the binding right. You could also ditch the egg altogether, making them vegan. Instead of the egg you can add plant based milk and cornstarch for the binding. Experiment with this a bit to get the consistency right. Because, what is cooking if not experimenting?

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