This recipe is for your leftover Thanksgiving mashed potatoes! Because I know this is exactly what you want for the day after a big indulgent meal: fried carbs. In any event, if you find yourself with lots of Thanksgiving leftovers, you’re probably going to be eating lots of carbs for a few days anyway. The fried part is just a bonus you get with this particular recipe. So that was kind of my logic when I came up with this one. Also, maybe you’ve got holiday houseguests for the weekend and need something fun to serve up for breakfast? Mashed potato pancakes are great for breakfast! You can use just about any old mashed potatoes for this dish. I used what was left of my truffled mashed potatoes, and they worked great. But if you made some other mashed potato recipe for the holiday (no hard feelings), go right ahead and make your cakes out of that. Whatever mashed potatoes you use for these cakes, make sure they’re chilled. I’m guessing most of you chill your leftovers, but just in case you ran out of room in the fridge or whatever, I figured I should let you know! Mix up your leftover potatoes with some flour, hot sauce, and nutritional yeast. The flour binds the cakes, while the hot sauce and nooch make them taste cheesy. Heat some oil in a skillet, then use floured hands to shape some pancakes and dredge them in flour. Fry the pancakes for a few minutes on each side. Transfer them to a paper towel-lined plate to drain the excess oil. Serve with your favorite toppings. I went with a little unflavored non-dairy yogurt and some chives, but cashew cream, avocado slices, leftover vegan gravy or salsa would be excellent as well.
Tips for Making Perfect Vegan Mashed Potato Pancakes
Since mashed potato recipes vary in terms of moisture content, you may need to adjust the amount of flour a bit. The colder the potato pancake mixture, the easier it is to work with. I like to keep it in the refrigerator, or even the freezer, between cooking batches of the pancakes. Since there’s no egg in this recipe, the base is quite a bit more delicate than the mixture you’d use to make traditional potato pancakes. Keep that in mind and be careful when shaping and handling the pancakes. Keep a bowl of flour handy and flour your hands to keep the potato mixture from sticking to them. Always be super careful when working with hot oil! The fact that these pancakes are a bit floppy makes it easy to splash the oil - I still have a little red mark on my foot from where some oil splashed when I was cooking this batch. (Another tip would be not to cook these barefoot.) Can these be made gluten-free? I’m not sure! But I suspect something like chickpea or oat flour would work as a substitution for the all-purpose flour in this recipe. These are best served immediately, but if you need to reheat some leftovers, just place them under the broiler for a few minute until they start to crisp back up.
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