Forgive me if this has been addressed here before. I didn't read all of the previous 19 years of posts. I was reading a Fine Cooking recipe for latkes today and have a question. It says to soak the grated potatoes in a bowl of water to save the starch and let it settle to the bottom. After removing the potatoes and drying them, the recipe says
"Transfer the potatoes to a medium bowl and using your hands, mix in the onion, egg, 1 tsp. salt, and 1/4 tsp. pepper. Carefully pour off the reserved potato soaking water to get to the white gluey starch on the bottom of the bowl. Transfer the starch to the potato mixture and mix it in with your hands."
My question is: Why go to the effort of removing the starch and then putting it back? Why not dry the potatoes without removing the starch, or if there is a good reason for soaking, why not just use potato flour instead of using the wet starch at the bottom of a bowl of water?
