Oy vey are brown frozen latkes okay?

January 28, 2009 4:38 PM

Will my latkes be OK if I make them from frozen batter and it's brown?

I froze some latke mix a few weeks ago, and I want to use it. It's potatoes and onion, grated fine, with mazoh meal mixed in and an egg or two.

Now that I look at it, it's quite brown, even more so than if you let it sit a while. I don't care that it's not pretty, but is it going to taste bad or be harmful?

Nor do I care if it's still kosher, I'm serving it with pork chops ;-)

I tried searching archives but the mefi search is out of service due to The Great Metafilter Outage of 2009.

posted by maniabug to Food & Drink (8 answers total)

My guess is that they won't be harmful but the consistency may be off. Can you fry a test batch before you decide to use em in a meal?
posted by gnutron at 4:52 PM on January 28, 2009

Response by poster: The meal is in half an hour when my wife gets home. She and I were pondering this question this morning, with no conclusive decision made. Maybe I'll boil some water for pasta as a backup plan.
posted by maniabug at 4:55 PM on January 28, 2009

I think they'll be OK. Potatoes get brown when exposed to air. If you and wife don't care about pretty latkes, eat em!
posted by KateHasQuestions at 4:56 PM on January 28, 2009

Response by poster: Awesome, I was afraid of some crazy nightshade toxin. Thanks mefi!
posted by maniabug at 5:03 PM on January 28, 2009

They'll fry better if the mix is thawed to room temp, but I don't see why freezing the mix should have any detrimental effect on the finished latkes, except that they may not be quite as tasty as they would have been had the batter been fresh. Enjoy!
posted by mosk at 5:06 PM on January 28, 2009

The texture of potatoes suffers a lot when they're frozen (which is why you don't add potatoes to stews you're going to freeze). They turn soggy and mushy.
posted by rq at 6:11 PM on January 28, 2009

Response by poster: Thanks for the answers! I did find they don't fry up as well, and the consistency suffered. I don't think I'll freeze the mix in the future.
posted by maniabug at 6:47 AM on January 29, 2009

Mine were unservable after I left the batter in the fridge overnight, so I'm guessing this won't work.
posted by cestmoi15 at 9:59 AM on January 29, 2009