Alton Brown's Secret Weapon For Delicious, Gluten-Free Latkes

For those who celebrate Hanukkah, potatoes frying in oil is the quintessential smell of the holidays. Latkes are potato pancakes that are commonly featured in Jewish holiday spreads; salty and crispy on the outside, light and moist on the inside, slather these babies in sour cream or apple sauce and you've got yourself an addicting dish. Latkes are traditionally made with shredded potato and onion, salted, peppered, and bound together in an eggy flour mixture before they're fried. However, for the gluten-free folks in your life, the flour makes this dish a no-go. Luckily, Alton Brown has an ingenious solution to the flour problem.

The flour in a latke dish works as a binding agent, which means you can easily replace it with something more gluten-friendly. Brown suggests adding a couple of tablespoons of dry instant potatoes to your latke mixture to get the shredded potatoes to stick together, making that perfectly round pancake shape. If you're not well versed in the world of instant mashed potatoes, we recommend the Idahoan brand which won out in our ranking of the 10 instant mashed potato brands. Using instant mashed potatoes as a binding agent is a great way to add even more subtle potato flavor to a dish that shines in its delicious simplicity.

Latkes date back to the Middle Ages and have seen many changes in the thousand years since. The long history of the Jewish diaspora has resulted in many different recipes. For example, the first latkes were made with cheese, and it was only until the potato became popular in Eastern Europe that latkes began to take the form we are familiar with today.

You should feel empowered to amend any latke recipe to your liking, after all, it's tradition. If you're trying to keep your gluten-free latkes kosher and finding it hard to get kosher instant potatoes, another option is to use matzo meal as a binding agent. While most traditional matzo meals contain wheat, barley, and other grains that contain gluten, Manischewitz brand matzo meal has gluten-free options.

Once you have the ingredients, the rest is easy. Salt your mixture right before you fry, so that the salt doesn't draw out too much moisture from the potatoes and onions which would make for a soggy liquid batter. Remember to use a wide skillet to fry your latkes, cast iron is best because it heats up evenly. It's always best to eat latkes straight from the pan, but if you're making them in batches, you can keep them warm in an oven set to 200 degrees Fahrenheit. When it comes to serving, sour cream and apple sauce are the traditional toppers. If you're feeling adventurous, try making a little latke-sandwhich featuring sour cream, lox, chive, and capers.