From Babcio’s cookbook

Placki Ziemniaczane (Polish Potato Pancakes)

Name: Placki Ziemniaczane (Polish Potato Pancakes)
Total time: 35 min
Yield: 4
Cuisine: Polish
Ingredients: 1 kg, starchy Potato; 2 (140 g) Onion; 2 cloves Garlic; 2 Eggs; 3 tbsp Flour; 1 tbsp Sour Cream; 4 tbsp Oil; 1½ tsp Salt; ½ tsp Black Pepper

35 min · Easy · Serves 4

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What you need

Written for 4. Change that in the app and the amounts follow.

Tick things off as you get them ready.

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How it goes

Grate the potatoes and onions on the medium holes of a box grater.
Babcio’s tip
Onion with the potato from the start: it stops the potato going pink on you.
Tip the whole lot into a sieve set over a bowl and press hard to squeeze the water out. Keep the water.
Let the drained water stand a minute, then pour the liquid off carefully. The white paste left in the bottom of the bowl is potato starch: scrape it back into the potato.
Babcio’s tip
That is the trick. The starch is what holds the pancake together and makes the edges go lacy and crisp.
Mix in the eggs, flour, crushed garlic, sour cream, salt and pepper.
Fry spoonfuls in hot oil, flattened out thin, 3–5 minutes a side until deep gold.
Babcio’s tip
Thin and patient. A thick one browns outside and stays raw in the middle, and you will only find out at the table.
Drain on paper and eat them standing up, which is the traditional way whether anyone admits it or not.

What she’d tell you

There is a trick here that separates the good ones from the grey, floppy ones, and it is the potato water. Everyone pours it away. Do not pour it away.