alton brown masher cakes
blog post
While sitting at my mothers house about a year ago, I watched her make a sort of potato pancake using leftover mashed potatoes and saltine crackers. This was something new she had come up with - and it was delicious. Reading Alton’s recipe for Masher Cakes, I was instantly reminded of my mother’s creation. I decided that I wanted something a little different at lunch today and felt like cooking. Using the leftovers from last weeks Mashers recipe, I made the “10 minutes more” recipe for mashed potato leftovers.
The book says to use leftovers, but does not really mention that they need to be cold. Being leftovers, they’re probably already cold - but the book fails to drive the point that they need to be cold.
You definitely want to do this with cold potatoes.
The first step of this recipe is to mix an egg and some fresh herbs into the leftover potatoes. I didn’t have the fresh herbs required, so I used dried ones. The instructions say to then divide the potatoes and flatten them into small pancakes and then coat in the panko. After that, you can refrigerate the cakes for a few hours if you wish. I found that mixing the potatoes warmed up the batter, and trying to flatten them into pancakes was a little difficult to get them to stay formed together. The next time I make these, I’d probably actually throw the mixed batter (before forming pancakes) into the fridge for a little while to sort of firm it up first.
Once formed and coated with panko, it’s time to fry these babies up. The recipe said to use regular olive oil - specifically mentioning not to use extra virgin. While it did not explain why or why not, I’ll take a guess and assume that it’s for the smoke point. Since we only had extra virgin on hand, I used vegetable oil which has a similar smoke point to olive oil.
One of the tricks with cooking in oil is keeping the oil at a steady temperature. This is easier when you’re deep frying something and have enough oil to keep a thermometer in. In a skillet coated with oil, you need to watch closely. In hindsight, I really probably could have - and should have - used the infrared thermometer I received as a birthday gift last year.
Why can't I ever get batches of food to come out looking the same?
The size of my skillet meant that I had to cook my Masher Cakes in two batches. The first one came out looking GBD as Alton instructed. The second one was more of a SBD: Spotted Brown and Delicious. For whatever reason, whenever I have to cook things in batches, anything from the second batch on just never comes out looking quite right. This goes for pretty much anything I cook on the stove. I’ve never quite figured it out.
I let them cool on a draining and cooling rig as directed, but no noticeable amount of oil dripped onto the paper beneath the rack. After a few minutes of cooling, it was time to eat.
I had forgotten that the original mashers needed more salt. As such, they needed a quick pass of the salt grinder. Once the seasoning had been fixed, they were pretty good. They were a little dry, but a little bit of ketchup or barbecue sauce fixes that easily.
I think I liked my mother’s saltine crusted potato pancakes better, but these were a nice midday snack that didn’t take long at all. I’d like to try making these using crushed up Cheez-Its instead of panko.
Masher Cakes Rating:
While sitting at my mothers house about a year ago, I watched her make a sort of potato pancake using leftover mashed potatoes and saltine crackers. This was something new she had come up with - and it was delicious. Reading Alton’s recipe for Masher Cakes, I was instantly reminded of my mother’s creation. I decided that I wanted something a little different at lunch today and felt like cooking. Using the leftovers from last weeks Mashers recipe, I made the “10 minutes more” recipe for mashed potato leftovers.
The book says to use leftovers, but does not really mention that they need to be cold. Being leftovers, they’re probably already cold - but the book fails to drive the point that they need to be cold.
You definitely want to do this with cold potatoes.
The first step of this recipe is to mix an egg and some fresh herbs into the leftover potatoes. I didn’t have the fresh herbs required, so I used dried ones. The instructions say to then divide the potatoes and flatten them into small pancakes and then coat in the panko. After that, you can refrigerate the cakes for a few hours if you wish. I found that mixing the potatoes warmed up the batter, and trying to flatten them into pancakes was a little difficult to get them to stay formed together. The next time I make these, I’d probably actually throw the mixed batter (before forming pancakes) into the fridge for a little while to sort of firm it up first.
Once formed and coated with panko, it’s time to fry these babies up. The recipe said to use regular olive oil - specifically mentioning not to use extra virgin. While it did not explain why or why not, I’ll take a guess and assume that it’s for the smoke point. Since we only had extra virgin on hand, I used vegetable oil which has a similar smoke point to olive oil.
One of the tricks with cooking in oil is keeping the oil at a steady temperature. This is easier when you’re deep frying something and have enough oil to keep a thermometer in. In a skillet coated with oil, you need to watch closely. In hindsight, I really probably could have - and should have - used the infrared thermometer I received as a birthday gift last year.
Why can't I ever get batches of food to come out looking the same?
The size of my skillet meant that I had to cook my Masher Cakes in two batches. The first one came out looking GBD as Alton instructed. The second one was more of a SBD: Spotted Brown and Delicious. For whatever reason, whenever I have to cook things in batches, anything from the second batch on just never comes out looking quite right. This goes for pretty much anything I cook on the stove. I’ve never quite figured it out.
I let them cool on a draining and cooling rig as directed, but no noticeable amount of oil dripped onto the paper beneath the rack. After a few minutes of cooling, it was time to eat.
I had forgotten that the original mashers needed more salt. As such, they needed a quick pass of the salt grinder. Once the seasoning had been fixed, they were pretty good. They were a little dry, but a little bit of ketchup or barbecue sauce fixes that easily.
I think I liked my mother’s saltine crusted potato pancakes better, but these were a nice midday snack that didn’t take long at all. I’d like to try making these using crushed up Cheez-Its instead of panko.
Masher Cakes Rating: