Let Latkes Be Latkes — or Risk the Wrath of Your Grandmother
Why you should have a potato to pick with newish Jew-ish versions of a Hanukkah tradition
Ways to ruin Hanukkah: 1.) Celebrate during a global pandemic that isolates you from your nearest and dearest. 2.) Have a volatile, mostly holiday-agnostic toddler whose mood swings are improved maybe only 5 percent by the promise of presents. 3.) Dance on your grandmother’s grave by making one of those newish, Jew-ish latke recipes floating around the internet.
Some take tater tots as a jumping-off point, some frozen hash browns, others a Swiss rösti. (Are we really now taking Hanukkah cooking direction from the goyishe, neutral-during-WWII Swiss?) Many of these try to solve problems that most people don’t really have with latkes, correcting, say, for the less-than-perfectly white color inside, which I’ve never heard anyone complain about. That’s fine, I guess, but here’s the thing: If you want a tater tot, or a hash brown or a rösti, have one. Have a hundred. But my advice is this: Let’s let latkes be latkes.
If you’re going to try to “fix” latkes with some newish, Jew-ish hack, fix the issues people actually have with them: the grating and the frying, and, ultimately, the heart disease.
