Perkins Potato Pancakes (Copycat Recipe)

These copycat Perkins potato pancakes are the ones you’re actually thinking of: soft and almost custardy inside, crisp and lacy at the edges, and built on a smooth pancake batter rather than a pile of shredded potato held together with hope. Three on a plate with applesauce and sour cream, exactly like the diner serves them.

Most recipes you’ll find for these get one thing wrong, and it’s the thing that matters.

Perkins Potato Pancakes Are Not Latkes

This is the single most useful thing to know before you start.

A latke is shredded potato, squeezed dry, bound with a little egg and flour, and fried. It’s mostly potato. It shatters when you bite it.

A Perkins potato pancake is a pancake batter with potatoes folded into it. Flour, milk, eggs, butter, sugar, and baking powder go in first and get whisked smooth. The hash browns come in at the end. The baking powder gives it lift, which is why the inside is tender and slightly cakey instead of dense.

If you’ve made these before and they came out heavy and greasy, this is almost certainly why. You were making latkes.

Why You’ll Love This Recipe

• It’s the right texture. Fluffy center, crisp edges, holds together on the spatula.
• Frozen hash browns do the work. No grating, no wringing out a dish towel, no browning potatoes on your cutting board.
• The batter rests while your pan heats. Ten minutes of doing nothing makes them noticeably better.
• Three ways to cook them. Skillet, Blackstone griddle, or air fryer, all covered below.
• Breakfast or dinner. They work as a side dish for pot roast just as easily as they do a Sunday morning plate.
• One more restaurant dish you can stop paying for. This one joins the rest of my copycat recipes.

Ingredients

• Frozen shredded hash browns. Thawed and squeezed dry, and I mean actually dry. Wet potatoes make the batter loose and the pancakes soggy. A 16-ounce bag is right for this batch. Fresh shredded Russets work too if you’d rather, see the notes below.
• All-purpose flour. The structure.
• Whole milk. Buttermilk works and gives a slight tang, but whole milk is closer to the original.
• Eggs. Two, room temperature if you think of it.
• Melted butter. In the batter, plus more for the pan.
• Sugar. Just a tablespoon. You won’t taste it as sweet, but it helps the edges brown.
• Baking powder. This is the lift. Don’t skip it or halve it.
• Yellow onion. Grated on the small holes of a box grater so it disappears into the batter rather than sitting in it as chunks.
• Fresh parsley. Chopped fine. It’s in the original and it’s more noticeable than you’d expect.
• Salt and black pepper.

How to Make Perkins Potato Pancakes

Step 1: Thaw and dry the potatoes. Spread the hash browns on a clean kitchen towel or a few layers of paper towel and press hard. Keep pressing until the towel is damp and the potatoes look dry. This takes longer than you think and it’s the difference between crisp and limp.

Step 2: Whisk the batter smooth. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, sugar, salt, and pepper. Add the milk, eggs, and melted butter and whisk until completely smooth with no lumps. It should look like slightly thick pancake batter.

Step 3: Fold in the potatoes. Add the grated onion, parsley, and dried hash browns. Fold with a spatula until every strand is coated. Stop as soon as it’s combined. The batter will look thick and scoopable, more like a loose dough than a pourable batter.

Step 4: Let it rest 10 minutes. The flour hydrates and the baking powder starts working. Heat your pan while it sits.

Step 5: Heat the pan and butter it. A large skillet or griddle over medium heat, around 350°F. Add a tablespoon of butter and let it foam. Medium is correct. Too hot and the outside burns before the inside cooks through.

Step 6: Scoop and press. Drop ¼-cup scoops into the pan, leaving room between them. Press each one down with the back of the spatula to about a half inch thick. Crowding the pan steams them instead of crisping them.

Step 7: Cook 3 to 4 minutes per side. Wait for a deep golden brown before you flip. If you lift a corner and it’s pale, give it another minute. Flip once, press lightly, and cook the second side 2 to 3 minutes.

Step 8: Hold them properly. Move finished pancakes to a wire rack set on a sheet pan in a 200°F oven. A rack, not a plate. Stacking them on a plate traps steam and softens the crust you just built. Add fresh butter to the pan between batches.

On the Blackstone

This is how I’d rather make them, and it’s what Perkins is doing on their flat top.

Heat the griddle to medium, around 350°F, and let it come to temperature fully before anything touches it. Butter a section of the surface, scoop, press, and cook the same 3 to 4 minutes per side. The advantage is obvious once you’ve done it: you can cook twelve at once and everyone eats at the same time instead of in shifts.

Two adjustments. Keep them toward the center of the griddle where the heat is most even, and re-butter between batches, since the flat top runs drier than a skillet. More on my Blackstone recipes if you’re new to griddle cooking.

In the Air Fryer

They work, with an honest caveat: they come out more like a soft baked potato cake than a crisp fried pancake. You lose the lacy fried edge. If that’s the trade you want for less butter and no standing over a pan, here’s how.

Line the basket with parchment. Form the batter into patties with your hands rather than scooping, so they hold their shape without a pan wall. Spray both sides with oil. Air fry at 380°F for 12 to 14 minutes, flipping at the halfway point and spraying again.

They reheat beautifully in the air fryer even if you cooked them on the stove. See the reheating notes below. If you like potatoes this way, my air fryer french fries and air fryer baked potatoes use the same principles, and my cooking charts and tips have times and temperatures for just about everything else.

Recipe Tips

• Dry potatoes, every time. If you take one thing from this post, this is it.
• Don’t skip the rest. Ten minutes of hydration changes the texture more than any single ingredient.
• Medium heat, not high. These are thick. They need time for the center to set.
• Grate the onion, don’t chop it. Chopped onion stays crunchy and pushes the pancake apart. Grated onion melts in.
• Flip once. Every extra flip presses out the air the baking powder created.
• Wire rack, not a plate. Non-negotiable if you’re cooking in batches.

Fresh Potatoes Instead of Frozen

You can, and some people prefer it. Shred two large peeled Russets on the large holes of a box grater, then immediately submerge them in cold water and swish. Drain, rinse until the water runs clear, and squeeze them bone dry in a towel.

The rinsing removes surface starch that would otherwise turn gluey, and the cold water keeps them from going gray while you work. It’s about ten extra minutes. Frozen hash browns have already been blanched and dried, which is genuinely why they work so well here.

What to Serve With Them

The diner plates them with applesauce and sour cream, and both are worth having. Sour cream with chopped chives is the version I make most.

Beyond that, they’re a legitimate dinner side. They go with pot roast, roast chicken, or any of my beef dinner recipes, filling the same slot you’d otherwise give mashed potatoes.

For breakfast, put them next to eggs and bacon and skip the toast. My favorite way to eat leftovers is to reheat two in the air fryer and ladle sausage gravy over the top, which turns them into something closer to biscuits and gravy. Browse more breakfast recipes if you’re building out a weekend spread.

Storing and Reheating

• Refrigerator: cool completely on a rack, then store in an airtight container with parchment between layers for up to 4 days.
• Freezer: freeze in a single layer on a sheet pan, then transfer to a bag for up to 3 months. No need to thaw.
• Reheating, air fryer: 350°F for 5 to 6 minutes, or 8 minutes from frozen. This is the best method by a wide margin and they come back genuinely crisp.
• Reheating, oven: 375°F on a wire rack for 8 to 10 minutes.
• Skip the microwave. It turns them into a damp sponge.

Make-ahead batter: you can mix it up to 12 hours ahead and refrigerate it, but the baking powder loses some of its lift. If you’re doing this, add an extra ½ teaspoon of baking powder to compensate. Handy if you’re slotting these into your weekly meal plan.

Perkins Potato Pancakes FAQs

Are Perkins potato pancakes gluten free? The restaurant version is not, and neither is this recipe as written. To make it gluten free at home, swap in a cup-for-cup gluten-free flour blend that already contains xanthan gum. The texture is very close. Note that this doesn’t tell you anything about how the restaurant prepares theirs, so ask them directly if you have celiac disease.

Why did my potato pancakes fall apart? Wet potatoes, or you flipped too early. Squeeze the hash browns until the towel is soaked, and don’t turn them until the underside is deep golden and releases on its own.

Why are mine soggy in the middle? The pan was too hot, so the outside browned before the inside cooked. Drop to medium and give them the full 3 to 4 minutes per side.

Can I use mashed potatoes instead of shredded? Not in this recipe. Mashed potatoes make a different, denser pancake with no shredded texture, and they’d throw off the liquid balance in this batter. If you have leftover Instant Pot mashed potatoes to use up, they need a recipe built around them rather than this one.

Can I make them dairy free? Yes. Unsweetened almond or oat milk and a neutral oil in place of the butter both work. You lose a little richness and a little browning.

How many does this make? About 12 pancakes, or four servings of three, which is how Perkins plates them.