<a href="http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/ck_culinary_qa/article/0,,FOOD_9796_1702259,00.html">Food Network: Culinary Q&A</a>: “<strong>Q:</strong> Can potatoes be grated into cold water and kept for several hours for potato pancakes?
“<strong>A:</strong> I love your practical question because I, too, love potato pancakes. Potato pancakes are made all over the world. And they have names as different as the people who make them. If the potato-cookers are Yiddish, the pancakes are latkes; if Italian, the pancakes are fritattas; if Spanish, the pancakes are tortillas, and if French the pancakes are criques.
“Other potato pancakes are made with cooked potatoes, such as American hash browns, Swiss roesti, and the French macaire. The Irish use both raw and cooked potatoes to make a potato pancake called boxty.
“Depending on the kind of potato pancake you’re making, leaving grated potato in water may not be a good idea. Let's assume you are making latkes. Soaking the grated potato in water will leech out some of the starch. Since starch is one of the main things that holds the pancake together, you will be losing this valuable glue.
“Many recipes in fact call for pressing the grated potato in a sieve over a bowl to drain off as much liquid as possible. Then, when the starch has settled to the bottom of the potato water, you pour off the water and add the starch at the bottom of the bowl back to the potatoes.
“Here’s what you can do instead: <em>Combine the grated potato with chopped onion. This not only tastes great, but the onion keeps the potatoes from turning brown before you cook them.</em> Potatoes brown because they are exposed to oxygen. Commercial processors use certain sulfur compounds to prevent this browning. Onions contain several of these compounds. That’s what gives onions their distinct odor, but they’ll also keep your potatoes white.”
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