Germans absolutely love potatoes. Hi
there today I'm going to be cooking with
two absolute staples of German cuisine - 
potato and apple, I'm making "Kartoffelpuffer",
a sort of potato fritter or
potato pancake quite a mouthful
pronouncing that try and have a go at
that yourself and see how you go. It's
basically usually served with an apple
sauce but if you don't want a sweet
version I'm also making a savory dip
which is also very traditional that will
go well with our "Kartoffelpuffer". So
for this recipe you're going to have to
subscribe, I know very smooth, and then
get the following ingredients of course
you want potatoes and some white onion
as well and some bread crumbs and flower
a flower of your choice and last but not
least some nutmeg.
For my cousins in the UK and friends
over there it's quite strange for them
the thought of having fried potato with a
sweet sauce but trust me it's really
nice and German apple sauce is more of a puree. So, we're gonna add some lemon
juice which really works well with
apples in any kind of situation just
roll your lemon a little bit to get the
juices flowing, I'm not going to be using
too much because our Granny Smith has
quite a high acidity.
Next up some brown sugar and last but
not least some cinnamon. You can also go
with vanilla flavors or any other flavor
that you like to pair with your apple
add a small dash of water not too much
you don't want it too runny as I say
German apple sauce is more of a puree
and there you go
that will go on to the stove.
So you want
to get it up to a nice rolling boil and
at the very least 10 minutes the apple
will lose a lot of water and that brown
sugar smells like caramel it's amazing
and then apples will get softer and
softer and eventually you can just sort
of press them down and mash them and
you've got your apple sauce. So that's
done now and you'll notice that the
apple has really broken down by itself
already it's gotten really soft and you
can use anything now to just make it a
bit smooth, I'll just use a potato masher
and go at it.
So it should break down really easily
and I like to have it not a hundred
percent smooth you can puree it if you
want but this is more of a homey sort of
nice texture I think and now all you
have to do is let it cool down properly.
Germans absolutely love potatoes and
there are loads of different opinions
which are most suited for "Kartoffelpuffer"
when I asked my German aunts and my
cousins which one they would choose a
lot loads of different answers so I'm
going with my personal favorite a waxy
potato rather than a starchy one which
gives you a bit more bite in your "Kartoffelpuffer" a bit more chewy and gooey
Now we're gonna grate our potatoes not
too fine you want it to be nice and
crispy so the big chunks actually help
with that
Now I'm gonna grate in half of this
onion, use a white onion and don't worry
too much about this being a sweet dish
with onion in it, onion does have an
inherent sweet flavor as well and you're
not going to notice it in a negative way
at all. Just chop your onion in half
remove the outer layer of skin and get
grating and try not to cry.
We're now gonna squeeze all the water
out we're gonna try and make it cry with
a little bit of salt and the way we're
gonna get it out is quite simple get
yourself a dish towel or an old t-shirt
or a pillowcase whatever you want don't
use something that you really treasure
and basically lay that down and then
just pop it in and all out and now we're
going to squeeze. Just make sure whatever
you have does let water through look at
that. There's an incredible amount of
water in potatoes just just try and be
patient and get as much of it out as
possible and then some people add eggs
to their potatoes now for the "Kartoffelpuffer"
to bind them together but
what I'm going to just do is wait for
the starch in this water to drop down
about five minutes or so should do and
then just skim off some of the water and
add the starch back into the potato and
that way it will bind together with its
own ingredient, this is what we're after
huge amounts of starch.
Cheers! So this starch is going to be our
binding agent that like I say you can
use egg just reintroduce the onion and
potato mixture into the bowl then you'll
need five tablespoons of flour. Now, I
like to leave out one or one and a half
of the tablespoons in favor of some
bread crumbs because that will give you
a little bit of crispness so here we go
and if this gets too dry just re add
some of that potato water - easy. Before I
completely mix this together though I'm
gonna also add some nutmeg which is one
of those flavors that kind of just goes
well with potato be careful with it
though because it is quite a strong taste.
So, once you've mixed that together it's
gonna get quite nice and sticky so all
you need to do was form a little bowl
with your hands and then press down on
it so you've got a nice even patty make
them nice and thin if you can don't be
scared it's alright if they're a bit
rough around the edges. So for our savory
option we're going to make a "Kräuterquark" which is a German type
of curd, you might know it as fromage
frais, but you can use any kind of thick
yogurt you like and we're going to mix
it up with some of the onion that we
have left over from our "Kartoffelpuffer".
Then I'll add in some fresh herbs the
"Kräuter" which is the German word for
herbs and I like to use chive a lot
because first of all it's got this
really nice smooth garlicky taste and
then to make it really German also use
some "Petersilie" or parsley. If you
haven't got a sharp knife you can also
use scissors here. So to season I'm just
going really basic and using salt and pepper.
So let's get these fried up in
the pan with a decent amount of oil.
Make sure you use an oil that works well at high temperatures I'm using rapeseed oil
but you can also go for sunflower
coconut or even ghee.
So you can hear really crackling away in
the pan and all those ridges on the
sides are really getting a lot of nice
color and crispness and that's why we
don't grate it too finely,
let me know in the comments if you got
the same result. So you've got these
beautiful golden "Kartoffelpuffer"
outside we've got real nice crispness
and inside is the gooeyness and a sort
of nice bite that I was talking about
earlier. I'm just gonna pull this apart
and you can see it's sort of very
elastic almost in a sense it's just got
this nice sort of texture. So for the
traditional version applesauce which is
cooled down considerably.
So there you have it let me know which
of the two options you prefer our
traditional applesauce and "Kartoffelpuffer"
combo or the one with "Kräuterquark" with
our savory dip. I definitely have to go
for the traditional applesauce version
that's what I grew up with and it's just
too good to resist. Subscribe for more
German flavors
