Recipe: Potato Cakes

With Saint Patrick’s Day just a few weeks away now, I thought it time to start posting some Irish recipes.  St. Pat’s falls on a Sunday this year, so you might as well plan ahead now and make a whole day of Irish inspired meals.  I’ll give you some helpful suggestions for that anyway.

A few weeks ago, I took my first crack at making potato cakes.  Although mentioned on a few breakfast menus during our Ireland trip, Joan and I first had potato cakes in Portrush, Northern Ireland.  Essentially, potato cakes are just a fried cake like pancakes but smaller.  They also consist mainly of two things – potato and flour.  Luckily that makes them really make.  Usually they’re served for breakfast, but in this household we often have “breakfast for dinner,” so we had them for a weeknight meal, paired with cheesy scrambled eggs.  Well I guess I had them for breakfast too, having the leftover potato cakes the next morning with a huge helping of my family’s oatmeal sausage, two fried eggs, and toast.  (Yeah, I didn’t eat lunch later that day.)

This recipe is taken directly from Irish Food and Cooking, our go-to Irish cookbook.  However, even after only making this recipe once, I’m just going to wing it next time.  It’s that easy, with precise measuring not really needed.

Recipe:

1 1/2 lbs. boiling potatoes, peeled

2 tbsp unsalted butter

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

Salt

1) Boil the potatoes in a large pan until tender.  Drain well and then mash.  Salt well (or to your personal preference), mix in the butter, and allow to cool (enough that you can handle the mash for kneading into a dough).

2) Turn out the mashed potatoes onto a floured work surface and knead in enough flour to make pliable dough.  More or less flour will be needed depending on the moisture in the potatoes.  Roll out the dough to a thickness of 1/4 - 1/2 inch (your personal preference) and cut into triangles.  

3) Heat a griddle or heavy frying pan over medium-low heat.  Cook the potato cakes for about 3 minutes on each side until golden brown.

Like pancakes are other griddle cakes, you can top potato cakes with maple syrup.  Honey also makes a nice sweet topping.  Like many things potato, my wife liked them with ketchup.  Although I stick my nose up to the ketchup idea, we did agree that next time a topping with some kick would be a good addition, like spicy pepper chutney.  

It’s also worth mentioning that the above recipe is just for a starter recipe for basic potato cakes.  Don’t have that many potatoes or have more potatoes?  Use whatever you have and just add as much flour as needed to make a dough.  Have leftover mashed potatoes from last night’s dinner.  By all means, use those too.  

You can also play around with the recipe and add other ingredients to make the cakes into a more sweet or into a more savory dish.  I very easily could see chives and onion added to the cakes to make a savory side for dinner.  For sweet, maybe add apple or applesauce to the dough?  I dunno, my head is having a hard time pairing a fruit with potato…

In any case, I encourage you to try these potato cakes.  They’re a fun different breakfast/lunch/dinner idea, and especially nice if you have some leftover mashed potatoes to get rid of.  Or the other way around…  Hmm, now there’s an idea for Saint Patrick’s.  Mash up some spuds for potato cakes in the morning, but then save some back for shepherd’s pie for lunch or dinner… 

Mash, mash, mash. You don't want lumpy 'tato cakes now do ya?

Potato cakes awaiting the griddle.

Triangles, squares, and rectangles.

I found that potato cakes are traditionally triangles for a reason. Triangles brown better and quicker!

 A very filling breakfast.