Vegetable Fritters

Anne-Marie Bonneau

11 years ago

I’m not sure what to call these. Fritters? Savory pancakes? Kitchen sink doughnuts? Whatever they are, they make a nice side dish for dinner or a tasty breakfast of leftovers the next morning. Their portability also makes them good for packing in lunches.

Lately I’ve tried to come up with more non-recipe recipes—guidelines really—that call for a cup of this, a spoonful of that, a dash of whatever, along the lines of my waste-not soup and frittata. Cooking methods like these help you use up what you have on hand and thus waste less food. For this post, I shredded up whatever vegetables I found rolling around in the refrigerator. If you do a lot of juicing, you could try to make these with your spent vegetable shreds. Like my wise boss said at the office today, “Waste represents something you paid for but didn’t use.”

The basic method

For these fritters, I stirred shredded vegetables, eggs, some sourdough starter, a bit of baking soda and some salt into the consistency of thick pancake batter. For each fritter, I measured out a scant two tablespoons and fried them in coconut oil in my skillet.

Use flour and baking powder if you don’t keep a pet starter. When I do eat carbs (bread, crackers, pancakes, waffles, tortillas), I try to stick with those I made with my sourdough starter. The bacteria and yeasts in a starter eat the sugars and starches in the flour so your insulin doesn’t spike like it would after eating pasty white carbs. However, some of these fritter batters had a bit of a runny consistency and needed additional flour. I used whole wheat and didn’t ferment it. You certainly could ferment it though. Just mix everything but the vegetables and eggs and let the batter sit for several hours.

Zucchini: a little too much batter

With the what-am-I-supposed-to-do-with-all-this-zucchini harvest about to occupy gardeners, I thought I would start with fritters made of these vegetables. They tasted yummy but after I squeezed the water out of two cups of shredded zucchini, I had more batter than vegetable. I topped these with a dollop of homemade sour cream and the green tops of new onions. Yum!

Carrot: A little too starchy

Don’t get me wrong, I liked both these and the zucchini fritters or pancakes or whatever they were. We gobbled up all of my experiments, but I think I added too many carrots here. I did like the sweet flavor of all those carrots though and these would have tasted good with maple syrup on them (I am Canadian…).

Veggie combo: just right

So the rescue fritters turned out the best—the ones I made with a combination of vegetables that I needed to use up. Coincidence? Well, yes actually. For these I used shredded carrots, parsnips and kohlrabi. The combination of starchy carrots and parsnips with the wet kohlrabi (it has a juicy, radish-like consistency) resulted in a not-too-wet, not-too-starchy batter. And the parsnips! I had no idea shredded parsnips, batter, salt and oil could taste so good together (seems a little obvious as I type that now…).

Ingredients

The consistency of your batter depends on which vegetables you use. Adjust the amounts until you have a thick batter.

1/8 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup sourdough starter
2 tbsp whole wheat flour
2 cups various grated vegetables
2 eggs
Oil for frying (I used coconut oil)

Directions

1. Combine ingredients until you have a thick batter. If you don’t have a starter, increase the amount of flour until you create the desired consistency.

2. Heat up about 3 tablespoons of coconut oil in a frying pan.

One day I’ll write a post on favorite kitchen tools and include this 1/8 cup (2 tbsp) scoop

3. Drop into the pan a scant 2 tablespoons of batter for each fritter.

4. Fry until golden, flip and fry the other side. Continue frying batter, adding more oil as needed.

5. Top with sour cream, crème fraîche, chopped green onions, sauerkraut or other garnishes.

Bon appétit!