How to Fry the Latkes

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Karen for Expert Village. We have our pan set up here for deep frying. I have about a quarter inch of canola oil in my pan and I set it on a low temperature to heat up. Now a good temperature for frying the latkes is 375 degrees and if you have a thermometer, a high temperature thermometer you can use that, or you can play with the temperature of the heat under the oil depending upon on how the latkes brown. Now a few things you are going to need are, you want to have some sort of a slotted spoon, they have these like this with little holes or a regular slotted spoon. I like to use this flat whisk, it's very nice for picking up and draining the oil from the latkes. Another set of handy tools, you can just use a regular wooden spoon to scoop your latkes or a tablespoon measure to scoop your latkes or really any spoon. I also like these scoops, these little mini ice cream scoops. This is about a tablespoon, it's a half ounce scoop and this is a full ounce scoop which is about 2 tablespoons. If you use a scoop like this it makes it very easy to get the same size latkes and to get the right amount and it scoops right out. I'm going to be using the 1/2 inch scoop. I'll just take a little batter like this in the scoop and put it in my hand and just flatten it out a little to make a pancake. You want to be very careful placing your latkes in the oil, you don't want to touch the oil, it's very hot, but you do want to have a flat latke. You just place it in, you don't want to throw it in, you don't want to drop it in hard. Now if you're using a spoon, you can use this method, you put a little on a spoon and you flatten it on the spoon and then you slide it off the spoon like that and that will get you a nice shaped latke. You want to be very careful when you're frying latke or deep frying anything that you don't have anything wet around because water will cause the oil to splatter. You also want to make sure you don't have any young children around or even older children around. It's best to keep as far away from the oil as possible, it can be very dangerous if oil sprays out on you. "