- Hey dudes, I'm Hilah and today
I'm making Spicy Tex-Mex Latkes,
latkes, ye-hotkeys. Get it?
It's a lasso. Yee-haw.
(upbeat music)
Start out with the potatoes.
I've got some Russets here which are my personal favorites for
latkes and I think they're everyone's favorite.
I don't peel 'em.
Do you peel your potatoes for latkes?
I say to hell with that noise.
There's fiber in there.
So many grate it by hand on a grater even I hate this but I do
like the texture a lot better than when you use
a food processor so suck it up and do it.
It's for Jesus, I mean God.
Moses.
I don't know (censored) about religions, y'all.
(light music)
I like to do about three-quarters of the potatoes
on the large side of the grater and then
a quarter or a third or
whatever on the small side to help them bind together better.
Damn, this is like a tricep workout.
I'm gonna be so imbalanced after this.
Phew!
Okay, so once those are all grated
the next very important part.
We're gonna squeeze all the liquid out of these but we're
gonna save it in this bowl.
It's gonna look brown and dirty but I promise I washed these
potatoes and it's only brown because of the skins and maybe
because the potatoes and started to oxidize.
'Cause it took so damn long to grate them.
It's a labor of love.
And you can use cheesecloth if you don't want to stain your
towel 'cause it probably will stain.
Okay, we're gonna set that aside and
we're gonna add the potatoes.
In this bowl, I've got some minced onion and some garlic.
We're gonna add the grated potatoes just like that.
I'm gonna add some salt and some pepper,
couple eggs and some recipes, maybe most recipes,
add matzo meal or flour to bind it together but I kinda like to
try to just keep it pure potato and that's why I graded some of
them finer so that'll help with the binding a little bit.
I've got a couple of red serranos that I grew my garden.
My garden is like one pepper plant that won't die.
That's all I have.
So I'm gonna dice, mince this up rather. Serranos are hotter than
jalapeños but you can use jalapeño and you can also cut
out the seeds in the membranes
if you want the flavor without the heat.
Mmmm.
I'm gonna go ahead and put two in because we like it spicy.
I need to get that on a shirt.
So I'm gonna mix this up.
I find a fork is pretty easy way to do it.
Okay, so then for this, I'm gonna pour off,
carefully pour off, this dirty shoe water and we'll see what
the potato starch looks like underneath that.
Look.
That's potato starch.
The last thing we're gonna add is some grated cotija cheese.
This is a dry Mexican cheese.
It's very salty and it kind of grates up like Parmesan and you
can sometimes buy it in bags already crumbled
so that's gonna add a lot of salt too.
So you don't want to go
too heavy at first with the actual salt.
Alright, so I think we're ready to fry.
So we're gonna go over to the stove,
we're gonna head up about
1/4 inch of oil in my cast iron skillet.
Don't skimp on it.
Oil is an important part of the holiday and we're gonna fry
these in about quarter cup spoonfuls to make
little roughly edged little latkes.
That one's a little big.
Don't make them that big.
Don't (censored) it up, guys.
Fry them for maybe two to three minutes on each side until
they're nice, deep golden brown.
The insides should be tender
and drain them on a little bit of paper
or put them on a rack and put 'em in an oven to keep them
warm while you fry all of them.
Like all Tex-Mex food these latkes go really good with some
sour cream on top.
As they are traditionally served.
I'm gonna do a little cilantro sprink.
Also applesauce is surprisingly good with these
so there's some of that.
And what about some hot pepper jelly?
Somebody sent me this for put in my mouth a while back.
Let's give it a little taste on these guys.
Yeah.
Whoa. Oh, my God.
Dude.
Yes, that's what you want.
So the outside is really, really nice and brown and crunchy and
inside the potatoes are tender but they're not like mushy.
They're still retain some integrity.
Full of integrity.
Mhmmm, mhmmm, mhmmm, mmmm.
Hot pepper jelly on these is phenomenal.
I don't think I've ever used that word seriously and I wasn't
even using it seriously then even though
it was really delicious.
Thank you so much for watching.
Don't forget to click right down there to subscribe and
I will see y'all next week.
Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas,
can't believe it's almost New Year's.
What the hell? Just kidding, bye.