Mashed potatoes have long been an essential part of traditional Thanksgiving dinner. Making too much food (sometimes on purpose) is another. If you’re going to go to all the work of putting together a feast, you might as well have leftovers to enjoy in the days following.
There are many ways to repurpose leftover mashed potatoes. You can use them as a topping for shepherd’s pie, make tender potato biscuits, or fill pierogi with them. One of our favorite leftover mashed potato recipes is mashed potato pancakes. We particularly love this Crispy Mashed Potato Pancake recipe because it’s simple and customizable.
What Is a Mashed Potato Pancake?
Making mashed potato pancakes is easy. Mix mashed potatoes with eggs, flour, and seasoning, form them into one big pancake (or several small pancakes), and fry it in a skillet. The outside gets crispy, and the inside is warm and fluffy.
If you choose to make one big mashed potato pancake, here’s a tip for flipping it without falling apart. After cooking the first side, slide the pancake onto a large plate. Put another large plate upside-down on top and flip the whole thing over. The uncooked side will now be on the bottom of the second plate, and you can slide it back into the pan unbroken.
You can serve these Crispy Mashed Potato Pancakes as a breakfast dish, a side dish with dinner, or—our favorite way—as a snack on the Friday after Thanksgiving as you’re sitting on your couch binging holiday movies.
The recipe creates a tasty but plain mashed potato pancake, and our readers have many suggestions for jazzing it up.
What to Add to Mashed Potato Pancakes
Think of this mashed potato pancake as a clean slate. You can add any of your favorite seasonings, fresh herbs, cheese, vegetables, or proteins—whatever sounds good!
Allrecipes readers had plenty of suggestions for customizing this dish and a few tips for success:
- Member SherryBerry1 wanted to add some green veggies to her potato pancake, so she added chopped leftover French-style green beans.
- One anonymous commenter added seasoned salt, minced garlic, chopped green onions, and shredded cheese.
- Another unnamed reader added cooked bacon and shredded mozzarella.
- One reader added fried bacon and grated sharp cheddar before cooking and topped the hot potato pancake with sour cream, saying it tasted “just like a twice-baked potato.”
- According to Allrecipes member Tana Johnson, the recipe works with mashed potatoes that are already jazzed up, like cheesy, garlic mashed potatoes.
- Toppings can jazz up the recipe, too. Member Missi K tops hers with ranch dip, and her dad pours on maple syrup. Member Benjamin Davis covers his in salsa.
- Member Rodney Jones was precise with how he changed up the recipe. He doubled the garlic, added salt and pepper, a few dashes of Tabasco sauce, two dashes of cayenne pepper, 1/8 cup of good Parmigiano Reggiano, 1/8 cup of finely grated cheddar, and about half a teaspoon of parsley. He rolled them into balls, coated them in flour, and fried them in light extra virgin olive oil and one tablespoon of butter.
- Finally, member donnellyk kept a helpful tip for making smaller potato pancakes in batches. Keep all the potato pancakes in the refrigerator, and don’t take them out until you’re ready to fry them. While frying the first batch, the following sets should remain in the fridge. Starting with cold pancakes helps them keep their shape and not break when you flip them.