Draniki

Cooking method

Technique: pan-frying pancakes made from raw grated potato, where draining beforehand is essential to get a crispy pancake rather than a soggy one.

Traditional equipment: a cast-iron skillet from Belarusian kitchens, a hand grater for the potatoes.

Signs it’s ready: the edges should be crispy and golden, the center should stay soft without being raw.

History

Draniki, pan-fried grated potato pancakes, are considered Belarus’s national dish, in a country where the potato holds such a central place in the diet that it’s sometimes jokingly called the nation’s “second bread.”

Served with sour cream (smetana), and sometimes stuffed with meat or mushrooms, draniki appear in very similar forms across Eastern Europe under different names, making an exclusively Belarusian origin difficult to establish with certainty despite the national-dish status they hold locally.

Ingredients — serves 4

• 2.2 lb (1kg) potatoes
• 1 onion
• 2 eggs
• 3 tbsp flour
• Oil, salt, pepper
• Sour cream, to serve

Draniki, step by step

1. Grate the peeled potatoes and onion finely.
2. Drain the excess liquid from this mixture by pressing it in a clean kitchen towel.
3. Mix in the eggs, flour, salt, and pepper with the drained pulp.
4. Stir until you get a batter that’s uniform but still slightly lumpy.
5. Heat oil in a skillet and drop spoonfuls of the batter, flattening them slightly.
6. Fry each pancake 3 to 4 minutes per side until golden and crispy, then serve with sour cream.

Nutrition, per serving

Calculated from the raw ingredient quantities above, divided by four servings.

This is a carbohydrate-and-fat dish, not a protein one. With only 10 g of protein per serving, draniki’s nutritional weight sits almost entirely in the potato’s carbohydrate and the oil absorbed during frying. The draining step described above matters here too: a well-drained, well-fried pancake absorbs noticeably less oil than a soggy one, which is the main lever for reducing the fat figure without changing the recipe itself.

Economic context

Potatoes, onion, eggs, and flour are about as inexpensive as everyday Belarusian ingredients get, consistent with draniki’s reputation as humble, daily home cooking rather than a special dish. The potato’s outsized role in the national diet is itself part of the reason a healthy-diet budget in Belarus can stay comparatively modest.

Source: World Bank / FAO, Food Prices for Nutrition database (Cost and Affordability of a Healthy Diet) v4.0, 2024 data, CC BY 4.0, DOI 10.57966/41AN-KY81. Retrieved 29 July 2026. This figure describes the cost of a healthy diet in Belarus generally — it is not a costing of this specific recipe.

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