I tried latke recipes from Ina Garten and Martha Stewart, and Garten’s buttery potato pancakes won me over.

• I made Ina Garten and Martha Stewart’s latke recipes to see which one I liked best.

• I preferred Garten’s recipe: the simple ingredients and butter gave them a lighter flavor.

• Stewart’s recipe with oil makes a more classic latke, but they were harder to flip.

Both Ina Garten and Martha Stewart are known for their delicious recipes. But what are the tastiest latkes?

Growing up celebrating Hanukkah, I ate my fair share of the holiday’s traditional fried potato pancakes. I was curious to see how two of my favorite celebrity chefs made latkes their own.

You can read Ina Garten’s full latke recipe here and Martha Stewart’s full recipe here.

I tested both recipes. Here’s how they went.

I started with Ina Garten’s recipe, which requires relatively simple ingredients.

The recipe includes potatoes, an egg, flour, salt and pepper. I was surprised to find that the recipe called for frying the latkes in clarified butter instead of oil. Eating foods fried in oil is part of the Hanukkah tradition, so I was a little skeptical about this change.

I started by peeling and grating the potatoes, then squeezed out the excess liquid.

I managed to cut myself almost immediately. Grate with caution.

I mixed the egg, flour, salt and pepper.

The resulting paste had the consistency of oatmeal.

I then started using clarified butter for frying.

The recipe includes instructions on how to prepare clarified butter. You can also just buy ghee from a grocery store and skip this step.

Making clarified butter involves melting the butter, waiting for the milk solids to settle, and skimming them off the top.

It reminded me of skimming the fat off the top of chicken soup. It was easy, but it took longer to wait for the solids to settle.

Once the butter was clarified, it was time to fry.

Garten’s recipe says to use a tablespoon of the potato mixture for each latke.

The little pancakes finished cooking in just a few minutes and were easy to flip.

I also loved that frying the latkes in butter didn’t make my entire apartment and person smell like oil. It’s a strong scent that tends to linger. These smelled faintly of melted butter, which was amazing.

The finished products are perfectly crispy even if they have not been fried in oil.

Since there were no other ingredients added to the dough, the potato flavor shone through and the buttery crust was delicious.

Paired with a little applesauce – my latke topping of choice – Garten’s recipe has become the one to beat for me.

It didn’t have the fatty taste of a traditional latke, but I actually preferred the smoother taste of butter.

Next, I started Martha Stewart’s latke recipe, which required additional ingredients.

Stewart’s recipe involved twice as many potatoes and eggs as Garten’s, plus additions like grated onion and beer.

I grated the potatoes and dried them with a cloth.

Stewart’s recipe says to reserve that potato juice, let the milky starch sink to the bottom, and pour off the liquid — like the clarified butter I made for Garten’s recipe.

I then added the eggs, a grated onion and a quarter cup of beer.

Grated onions are standard in latke recipes – beer, not so much. I was curious to see how this would affect the flavor and texture.

After mixing everything together, I put half a cup of batter at a time into a pan of hot oil as the recipe called for.

The larger latkes took a lot longer to fry than Garten’s, and they were a little more unruly to flip. I’m always trying to get a splash of oil on my favorite pair of jeans.

As that classic oily smell of Hanukkah filled the kitchen, I grew nostalgic for the latkes of my youth.

I could already tell that these latkes were going to be the more traditional of the two.

Stewart’s recipe tasted like the standard latke you can get at any Hanukkah party.

I couldn’t taste the beer, but the grated onion and crunchy, oily goodness created a tangier flavor that screamed Hanukkah to me.

Personally, I preferred Garten’s version of the potato pancake, but Stewart’s recipe is great if you’re looking for a classic latke.

Even though they’re not fried in oil – which is kind of the whole point of eating them on this holiday – I enjoyed Garten’s latkes more because they were easier and quicker to prepare and that they had a sweet, buttery flavor that I loved. But Stewart’s recipe is perfect for traditionalists.

Read the original article on Business Insider