Busy in Brooklyn founder breaks down the significance of Hanukkah while cooking her famous crispy, perfect potato latkes

Amissa Pitter

Chanie Apfelbaum shares her secrets and tricks for her crisp recipe with her children and explains bringing light into the world through love, food, and tradition.

Video Transcript

- We're making potato latkes. Actually, my perfect potato latkes.

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They're just super, super crispy. They just disappear from the frying pan. Growing up, obviously, my mom made latkes on Hanukkah. Hers weren't the crispiest, so I guess I wanted to master that.

- Every year, we have them, and they never fail to impress me.

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- Hi. I'm Hani.

- I'm Esther.

- We're celebrating the Miracle of the Oil on Hanukkah. There was one jug of oil left in the Holy Temple, and it lasted for eight days. So that's why we like the menorah. And we basically celebrate by eating fried foods. And you can't go wrong with that.

- Also, having a Hanukkah party with all my family, singing when we were lighting the menorah, it's very special to me.

- So I'm actually the author of two bestselling kosher cookbooks. "Totally Kosher," this is newly released in March of this year. In my first cookbook, "Millennial Kosher," I have my perfect potato latkes, green eggs and latke. And I serve it with a latke, some sauteed spinach, and a runny egg and some sriracha. And they're so good for breakfast and Hanukkah, and really all year round.

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We're going to be making potato latkes, so we start off by peeling our potatoes. We put them in a bowl of water so they don't brown.

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- Do you want to break it? Thank you.

- [INAUDIBLE]

- Good job. So we're going to prep our onion into quarters. Yeah.

- Put in some [INAUDIBLE] potatoes?

- Yeah. You alternate potato, onion, potato, onion. It keeps the mixture nice and white. We're going to get that into a towel. Really, the secret to the crispiest latkes are getting out as much liquid as possible. So you want to really squeeze it.

So now that we let it settle, you can see on the bottom of the pan right there, that's potato starch. We want that. So I'm going to pour off the liquid on the top, and we'll reserve the potato starch. That's all the starch right there. Lots of milk and some salt, pepper. Now we're going to go in.

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You want to use a nice, heavy skillet. And the secret to good crispy latkes is lots of oil. So you don't want to skimp on the oil. It's got to-- we're frying it, after all. And actually, a great trick if you're frying a lot over Hanukkah to keep your oil clean is to put a carrot inside. I pack my batter into a quarter-cup measuring cup, and then I put it in the oil. And then I use the bottom to press down on it to create these lacy edges. Now press down. Mm-hmm. Perfect.

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Oh, look at that. That's what we're looking for. I like to put it on a rack. OK. I mean, look at those crispy edges. Should we go in for a bite? Oh, my god. The best! Who wants latkes?

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A lot of what I do and what gives me really great purpose in my life is to honor my brother Ari's memory, because he was killed in 1994 in a terrorist attack on the Brooklyn Bridge, was noticeably Jewish with his black hat. His van was shot up with 40 rounds of ammunition, and he was shot in the brain. Hanukkah is really all about our survival, the Jews going up against the huge Greek army. And they were just a small army, the Maccabees. And they had a huge victory and the Miracle of the Oil and bringing light into the world. And that's what I'm trying to do in my small way-- bringing light through love and food and tradition. And I want to continue doing that.

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