Deruny: Ukrainian Potato Pancakes That Stay Crisp
The UAFest kitchen team
August 2026 · 7 min read
The food tent at Riverside Park, Carleton Place
Deruny are potato pancakes: raw potato grated fine, bound with a little flour and egg, fried in hot oil until the edges go lacy and brown. They are one of the cheapest dishes in the Ukrainian repertoire and one of the most defended.
Every region has its own name and its own additions. In Polissia they are called kremzlyky, elsewhere tertiukhy. The core is unchanged: potato, onion, heat, sour cream.
The grate decides everything
Fine grating gives a smooth, tender pancake that holds together; coarse grating gives ragged edges and more crunch. Most Ukrainian cooks use the fine side of a box grater and accept the extra work.
The onion goes in grated as well, and it does double duty — flavour, and the acid that slows the potato from browning while you work.
Why the batter turns grey
Grated potato oxidises within minutes. The classic fixes are speed, the grated onion, and a spoonful of sour cream or lemon juice stirred straight into the bowl. The colour of the raw batter matters less than people fear — heat browns everything anyway — but a batter left standing half an hour will also weep water and fry limp.
Drain some of that liquid off before frying. Pour it away and you lose the potato starch that settles at the bottom, so tip the water out and scrape the white starch back into the bowl.
What they are eaten with
Sour cream, always. Beyond that: fried mushrooms in autumn, crackling and onion at a farmhouse table, apple sauce for children, or a spoon of soft cheese. Deruny with a mushroom sauce is a full dinner in western Ukraine, and in Zhytomyr region a whole festival is built around the dish.
- Sour cream and dill — the default.
- Fried wild mushrooms with onion — the autumn version.
- Shkvarky, crisp pork crackling, scattered over the top.
- A version baked in a clay pot with meat and sour cream, called deruny po-selianskomu.
Recipe
Deruny (Ukrainian Potato Pancakes)
Grated potato pancakes fried crisp, served hot with sour cream.
- Prep
- 20 minutes
- Cook
- 25 minutes
- Total
- 45 minutes
- Makes
- About 16 pancakes, 4 servings
Ingredients
Batter
- 1 kg floury potatoes, peeled
- 1 medium onion
- 1 egg
- 3 tbsp all-purpose flour
- 1 tsp salt
- ½ tsp black pepper
- 1 tbsp sour cream (optional, keeps the colour)
To fry and serve
- Sunflower oil for shallow frying
- Sour cream
- Chopped dill or green onion
Method
- 1GrateGrate the potatoes on the fine side of a box grater into a large bowl, grating the onion in as you go so the mixture keeps its colour.
- 2Drain, keep the starchTip the bowl and pour off the loose liquid. Leave the white starch that has settled underneath and scrape it back into the potato.
- 3BindMix in the egg, flour, salt, pepper and sour cream. The batter should drop thickly from a spoon; add a spoon more flour if it runs.
- 4FryHeat 5 mm of oil in a heavy pan until a drop of batter sizzles instantly. Spoon in mounds and flatten them to about 1 cm. Fry 3 to 4 minutes a side until deep golden, and keep the heat steady — too low and they drink oil, too high and the middle stays raw.
- 5Drain and serveLift onto paper, salt lightly and serve straight away with cold sour cream and dill. Deruny wait for nobody.
Notes from the kitchen
- Half a grated apple in the batter is a common trick for children's portions.
- For a crisper edge, replace a spoon of the flour with potato starch.
- Leftovers reheat in a dry pan; the microwave turns them to leather.
Ukrainian kitchens cook all day at the festival — deruny, varenyky, borscht and grilled sausage.
Sunday, September 13, 2026 · 12 PM – 6 PM · Riverside Park, Carleton Place
What people ask
Ukrainian potato pancakes made from finely grated raw potato with onion, egg and a little flour, fried in oil and served with sour cream.
They are close cousins. Deruny are usually grated finer and served with sour cream and dill; latkes are often coarser and served with apple sauce.
Drain the loose liquid, keep the settled starch, and use enough flour and egg to bind. Frying in oil that is hot enough to sizzle on contact sets the edge immediately.
Not really. Grated potato weeps and darkens within the hour. Grate, mix and fry in one go.
Newsletter
Get the next guide first
Recipes, festival news and vendor calls — a few emails a year, no more.
By subscribing you consent to receive festival emails from the Ukrainian Community of Lanark County. Unsubscribe anytime.