Deruny – Crispy Ukrainian Potato Pancakes

Step-by-step recipe

1. A short introduction. In our family deruny are never made in advance: there is always a queue for them, and they are eaten right away, hot and crispy. We never reheat them or stew them with pork cracklings in clay pots after frying, although that is a very good recipe. We don't pour melted lard or fried onions over them either. It somehow never caught on with us, though draniki are often made exactly that way.
   
2. Take your time peeling the onion and potatoes. Carefully cut out any damaged spots and all the eyes. Cut large potatoes in half: quite often there is a rotten hollow inside.
   
3. Next comes the exciting part: grating. I'll confess, it is my least favourite part of cooking. Without a kitchen appliance, the potatoes are grated by hand. I believe it is called a rasp grater: a sheet of galvanized or chrome-plated tin, densely punched with holes as if by an ordinary nail, with sharp burrs around the edges. Grating a kilogram of potatoes on it is torture. It is easy to grate your fingers too. Just kidding.
4. Once, I no longer remember why, I got lazy and minced the potatoes in an ordinary meat grinder with a fine plate. The pieces came out only slightly coarser, but it saved me a huge amount of – no, not time, but nerves! And the potato pancakes turned out simply excellent. Since then, for a quarter of a century now, grating potatoes for deruny has been an easy job. By the way, a blender or a food processor works just as well.
5. If you want to do it the traditional way, the grater awaits you. I haven't mentioned yet that the onion needs to be grated too.
6. So, mince the peeled potatoes and onion twice, so the potato batter is smoother, into a fairly deep bowl – preferably plastic, glass or enamel. Potatoes darken quickly in the air, so don't take too long.
   
7. Season with salt and pepper – strictly to taste. Stir thoroughly with a fork. I can't tell you how much seasoning you need, so taste it. I don't mean eating raw potatoes – just lick the fork.
   
8. Crack in one egg. Strictly speaking, you can do without it, but the white helps bind the batter a little, and a bright yolk gives the dish a nice colour. Mix everything very thoroughly until completely smooth.
9. Now an important point. Depending on the potato variety, you need to add a little flour, otherwise the pancakes may simply spread out in the pan. To start with, I recommend 1 tbsp of flour per 1 kg of potatoes. Mix thoroughly. You can always add more flour later if the pancakes start spreading while frying.
   
10. Heat sunflower oil in a frying pan until it starts to crackle quietly. You need quite a lot of oil – about as deep as the pancakes will be thick. Don't worry: the pancakes absorb little oil, and some of it drains off afterwards. Still, as the experts say, potato pancakes are hardly health food.
11. Spoon portions of the potato mixture into the sizzling oil with an ordinary spoon. By an ordinary spoon I don't mean one from a fancy cutlery set, but the good old spoon from childhood that every cookbook calls a tablespoon (tbsp). According to the books, a full-size spoon has a bowl 7 cm long and 4 cm wide. So, one spoonful of the mixture makes one pancake. Boldly place the mixture into the hot oil, close together but with a small gap between them. Use the same spoon to flatten the pancakes slightly while they are still raw.
    
12. Fry uncovered over medium-high heat for a few minutes, until a beautiful golden-brown crust forms – usually 3-5 minutes. Turn them over with a fork and fry the other side until done.
    
13. Transfer the finished deruny to a plate. Before the next batch, be sure to remove any crumbs and bits left in the oil – they burn quickly.
14. Spoon the next batch into the pan and fry, until all the mixture is used up.
15. They must be eaten straight away, piping hot from the pan. With sour cream – and plenty of it. If you have the patience, you can add pork cracklings, fried onions and so on.
    
16. We prefer them only with thick, fresh sour cream, to taste. By the way, the tastiest way to eat potato pancakes is to spread sour cream on one and put it on your tongue (don't worry, by then it has cooled a little and won't burn you); if you open your mouth a bit wider, you won't even need to bite. And call them whatever you like – draniki, teryukhy and so on.