Categories: Main DishesNo-meat

Deruny (Potato Pancakes)


There is more than one recipe for pancakes on this website, if you are looking for some other recipe, try here: all pancake recipes.

Potato pancakes, prepared from fresh chopped or grated potatoes, onions, eggs and flour, are commonly associated with various cuisines of Europe. In Ukraine they are called “deruny”, in Russia and Belarus “draniki”; similar recipes can be found in Polish, German, Austrian, Czech cuisines.

Potato pancakes are usually a main no meat dish for lunch or breakfast; it tastes good topped with sour cream or mushroom sauce.

Even though potato pancakes are good enough as a separate dish, they can be also served as a side dish for vegetable or meat main dish course.

Ingredients:

  • 4-5 medium size potatoes (about 1.5 lb)
  • 2-4 onions (to taste)
  • 1 egg
  • 2-4 tablespoons of all purpose flour
  • Salt to taste
  • Vegetable oil

How to prepare, step-by-step:

  1. Prepare ingredients: onions are optional in this recipe and may be safely skipped, or reduce amount of them if you wish. Amount of flour is may vary as well if you like pancakes more firm add a bit more flour:
    Deruny (Potato Pancakes) Recipe: Step 1
  2. Skin potatoes and peel onions:
    Deruny (Potato Pancakes) Recipe: Step 2
  3. Take big bowl and grate onions on big slots (that may be challenging, so you may use food processor or mincer for this instead of grater):
    Deruny (Potato Pancakes) Recipe: Step 3
  4. Then grate all potatoes on the grater on big slots as well, salt to taste and add an egg:
    Deruny (Potato Pancakes) Recipe: Step 4
  5. Mix everything and add flour:
    Deruny (Potato Pancakes) Recipe: Step 5
  6. Mix everything; as I said before you may vary amount of flour to obtain the texture of the batter you like, just remember the batter should be still liquid enough so you can easily ladle it:
    Deruny (Potato Pancakes) Recipe: Step 6
  7. Warm up a skillet with 2-3 tbsp of vegetable oil (I usually take a sunflower one) over moderate heat. When skillet is warmed up, ladle a bit of batter with a table spoon and pour it to the skillet, correct the form if needed and fry on one side until browned in color, then flip to other side and fry for the same amount of time. Repeat the same procedure for the rest of the batter:
    Deruny (Potato Pancakes) Recipe: Step 7
  8. Stack prepared potato pancakes on the plate:
    Deruny (Potato Pancakes) Recipe: Step 8
  9. Serve potato pancakes warm with your choice of sauce. They are good with mayonnaise, sour cream, mushroom sauce or ungarnished:
    Deruny (Potato Pancakes)
Enjoy!

View Comments

  • Hola Julia,

    I didn't find an e-mail address to send this, so I chose one of your recipes which is my fav and am posting this:

    I am thrilled to have stumbled on to your site. I'm an ardent fan of cooking (more personal than for business reasons) and I've tried making some of your recipes, and they all turned out perfectly (ask my roommate!). Thank you for doing this :)

    I have one request, I'm sure it's a very easy recipe to make, except every time I've tried making it, I failed. Can you post how to make Fried Rice? Chicken fried rice would be perfect, but any is good. I'd be extremely grateful for it :)

    Once again, thank you for creating this site for those of us who aren't Iron Chef material :-D

    Cheers

    • Hello Hal,
      and thank you for trying my recipes :)

      One of the reasons why my recipes usually work is because I cook them myself, lol... And I am not Iron Chef material either :)
      But that is also a reason why I don't have fried rice recipe up yet, it is not very Ukrainian/Russian recipe and I never tried it. I will try to cook some to see if I can even make it, but it may take some time, please forgive me if you need that recipe urgently.

      BTW, in future you can contact me by posting comment here: https://www.enjoyyourcooking.com/contact-me

      Thank you again and welcome to EnjoyYourCooking!

  • It is better to squeeze the grated potatoes in order to remove as much juice as possible and we usually don't put onions in Russia :)

  • I made these a few days ago and they were a hit with me and my potato-loving brother. It's our favourite snack for 5 pm hunger pangs. Thank you so much for this brilliant recipe! :D

  • My German grandmother use to cook the drained starchy liquid from the potatoes and add to the potatoes as a thickener in lieu of flour - I think it made them crispier - and oooh so yummy!

  • Hi, On the recipe for Deruny,I remember my Grand Mother using baking powder too. Can you use baking powder too,and how much? What does that do by using that,do you still use flour? Thank you, Alex Hagan

    • Baking powder is usually used instead of baking soda, I don't put any of these in this recipe but you can; it will make them a bit more "fluffy".
      I would do 2 -3 teaspoons of baking powder.

      And even if you use baking powder or soda, you still need to use flour.

  • Обожнюю деруни,у нас ще кажуть "тертюхи":)
    У Вас вони дуже апетитно виглядають!