Traditional Deruny Recipe: Crispy Grated Potato Pancakes

Active time: ~30 minutes | Total time: ~40 minutes | Serves: 4 | Difficulty: Easy

Quick Overview

1. Grate the potatoes and onion on the fine holes, a little of each in turn
2. Press out the extra liquid in a sieve, but don’t squeeze the potato dry
3. Stir in the eggs, flour, salt and pepper and start frying straight away
4. Fry spoonfuls in hot sunflower oil, no thicker than 5mm, until golden on both sides
5. Drain on paper towels and serve hot with sour cream

What Deruny Are

Deruny are Ukrainian potato pancakes: raw potato grated together with onion, bound with egg and usually a little flour, and fried in sunflower oil until golden on both sides. The name comes from the method itself, since the potatoes are grated, “derty” in Ukrainian.¹ Different regions know them as kremzlyky, tertiukhy, rysylovanyky or terchanyky, and they are especially popular in the north and east of the country.¹

They are eaten hot, straight from the pan. Sour cream is the usual topping, though cheese, cracklings and ryazhenka, a fermented milk, all turn up beside them as well.^2,1,17

History and Cultural Roots

The dish can’t be older than its main ingredient, and in Ukraine the potato is a relatively late arrival. The Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine’s entry on traditional foods says that it reached Ukraine from America through Europe in the 17th century. By now it is the most widely used vegetable in Ukrainian cooking, and the same entry notes that potato pancakes are served with cheese or sour cream.²

Deruny were Sunday food, cooked for breakfast or dinner, according to the Authentic Ukraine food project.¹

The Korosten Deruny Festival

The town of Korosten in Zhytomyr region, in the north of Ukraine, held its first deruny festival on 28 September 2008, and the festival brought it the title of capital of deruny. The pancake at that first festival weighed 118kg. At the third, in 2010, the organizers fried one 2.5 meters long that weighed 136kg, made from 150kg of potatoes, and the same year Ukraine’s first monument to deruny went up in the town’s Drevlianskyi Park.³

The festival was not held in 2014 or in 2020. Since the full-scale invasion it has gone on as small deruny fairs, and the 2026 festival, planned for 12 September in Drevlianskyi Park, was cancelled for security reasons.⁴

Traditional Deruny Recipe

This recipe was compiled by Heritage Healthy Kitchen from a comparison of published recipes; the sources are listed at the end of this article. Figures that are Heritage Healthy Kitchen’s own estimates rather than taken from a published source are marked as such.

The published recipes agree on the essentials. Most use one onion and one egg for 300–700g of potatoes.^5,6,7 The flour runs from none at all to a tablespoon or two, with potato starch as an alternative, and one chef’s recipe uses 50g of flour for 480g of potatoes.^8,5,6,1,7 The pancakes are fried in sunflower oil, no thicker than 5mm, for 2–3 minutes a side.^1,6 The amounts below sit inside those ranges. The weight of the onion, the number of pancakes and the serving size are Heritage Healthy Kitchen’s estimates.

Ingredients (makes about 14–16 pancakes, an estimate)

The batter

• 750g (about 1⅔ lb) floury, high-starch potatoes, peeled
• 1 large onion, about 150g (5 oz), peeled
• 2 eggs
• 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour, or potato starch
• 1 teaspoon salt, plus a pinch for serving
• ½ teaspoon ground black pepper
• 4–5 tablespoons sunflower oil, for frying, plus more as needed

To serve

• Sour cream
• Fresh dill, chopped (optional)

Method

1. Grate the potatoes and onion. Peel the potatoes and grate them straight away rather than leaving them in water, which draws out some of the starch.⁵ Use the fine holes of a box grater or the fine grating disc of a food processor, and alternate as you go: a little onion, then some potato, then more onion. The onion keeps the grated potato from darkening.^1,6,8,5
2. Drain, but not completely. Tip the mixture into a sieve and press out the extra liquid with a spoon or lightly with your hands. It doesn’t need to be squeezed dry.^1,6,8
3. Mix the batter. Add the eggs, flour, salt and pepper and stir until evenly combined. The batter should be about as thick as thick sour cream.¹ Start frying straight away.⁵
4. Fry. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium to medium-high heat until it shimmers. Drop in about 2 tablespoons of batter per pancake, leaving room between them, and flatten each to no more than 5mm (¼ inch).^6,1 Keep the heat moderate, so they brown without staying raw inside.⁷ Fry 2–3 minutes, until golden underneath, then turn and fry another 2–3 minutes.⁶ Work in batches, adding a little oil between them as needed.
5. Drain and serve. Lift the deruny onto paper towels to take up the extra oil and sprinkle with a pinch of salt.^5,6 Spread them out rather than stacking them while hot, so the crust stays crisp.⁸ Serve hot with sour cream, and dill if you like.^5,6

Kitchen Tips

Choose the right potato. Old, floury potatoes hold a lot of starch, and the starch is what binds the batter; deruny made from new potatoes tend to fall apart in the pan.^7,5 Leave out any potato with green patches under the skin. The green color comes with solanine, a natural toxin that in excess can cause stomach upset.⁹

Grated potato darkens as it meets the air, and the longer it sits the darker it gets. Grating the onion along with it and frying straight away keeps the color.^7,5 If the batter seems loose, let the liquid you pressed out stand in a glass until the starch settles, pour off the water and stir the starch back into the potatoes.⁷

Flour changes the texture. Less flour gives crisper deruny, more flour softer ones.⁷

Toppings and Variations

Beyond sour cream, deruny are served with cracklings, cheese or ryazhenka. A sauce of sour cream with fried mushrooms, onion and flour has long been popular, and in the western regions it is made with porcini.¹ Some cooks stir a spoonful of sour cream or kefir into the batter.⁷

Thicker deruny, sometimes with a filling, are first fried in the pan and then finished in the oven, and garlic can go into the batter as well.¹ One published version grates the potatoes coarsely, leaves out the flour, adds a clove of garlic and finishes the pancakes for 10 minutes at 180°C (350°F) after frying.⁸

A Lighter Way to Make Them

Deruny can also be baked instead of fried. Published oven recipes for potato pancakes brush the baking sheets lightly with oil, 2 tablespoons in one of them, spread the batter into thin rounds and bake them at 220°C (425°F) for 15–20 minutes, until the bottoms are deeply golden, then turn them and bake about 10 minutes more.^10,11 Baking rather than frying, and measuring oil with a teaspoon, are among the NHS tips for eating less saturated fat.¹² With the batter above, that makes a serving about 30 kcal and 3g of fat lighter, a Heritage Healthy Kitchen estimate. The crust is not the same, though: baked deruny brown only where they touch the hot sheet.

Salt and the topping are the other two places to go lighter. The NHS advises adults to have no more than 6g of salt a day and suggests black pepper, herbs and spices in its place;¹³ half a teaspoon of salt in the batter instead of a full one roughly halves the sodium per serving. Sour cream is on the NHS list of foods high in saturated fat,¹² and Cleveland Clinic suggests swapping Greek yogurt in for some of it.¹⁴ Two tablespoons of plain low-fat Greek yogurt add about 20 kcal and under 1g of fat, against about 60 kcal and 6g for the same amount of sour cream.

Nutritional Information

Per serving, one quarter of the recipe (about 3–4 pancakes), before toppings:

• Calories: approximately 280–345 kcal
• Protein: 7–9g
• Total fat: 11–14g, of which saturated about 2g
• Carbohydrates: 39–47g
• Fiber: 3–4g
• Sodium: 565–690mg

Two tablespoons of sour cream add about 60 kcal and 6g of fat.

Potatoes are a source of potassium, about 600mg in a potato, along with fiber, vitamin C and vitamin B6. Most of the fiber is in the peel, which deruny leave out.⁹

Nutritional values are estimates based on standard ingredient databases (USDA FoodData Central). They vary with the size of the potatoes, how much oil the pancakes take up and how much salt goes in.

Serving and Storage

Deruny are best eaten as soon as they come out of the pan. Cooked leftovers keep in the refrigerator for 3–4 days, or in the freezer for 3–4 months.¹⁵ To freeze them, layer the cooled pancakes between sheets of parchment.⁶ Reheat them on a parchment-lined tray in the oven at 175°C (350°F),⁶ until hot all the way through, 74°C (165°F) in the center.¹⁵

Further Reading & Sources

The recipe is a compilation based on the published recipes listed here; these links are provided for readers who want to explore further.

1. Deruny. Authentic Ukraine. No author or date given on the page. Regional names, the name from “derty,” Sunday serving, toppings, thicker oven-finished deruny; published recipe.
2. S. Stechishin. Traditional foods. Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies. The potato’s arrival in the 17th century, its place as the most widely used vegetable in Ukrainian cooking, potato pancakes served with cheese or sour cream.
3. Istoriia Mizhnarodnoho festyvaliu deruniv u Korosteni (chastyna 1) [History of the International Deruny Festival in Korosten, part 1]. Korosten City Council. No author or date given on the page. First festival on 28 September 2008, record deruny, the monument.
4. Dariia Markova. (3 September 2026). Bezpeka ponad use: u Korosteni vymusheno skasuvaly shchorichnyi Festyval deruniv [Safety first: Korosten forced to cancel its annual Deruny Festival]. Ukrainska Pravda. Zhyttia. The years the festival was not held, the wartime fairs, the 2026 cancellation.
5. Yevhen Klopotenko. (9 October 2022, updated 19 July 2024). Kartopliani deruny v blenderi [Potato deruny in a blender]. klopotenko.com. Published recipe; starchy potatoes, onion against darkening, frying straight away.
6. Debra Cummings. (13 June 2024). Ukrainian Potato Pancakes (Deruny). Fine Foods Blog. Published recipe; layering for the freezer and reheating in the oven.
7. Yuliia Skoryk. (4 September 2026). Ne rozvaliatsia i ne “posyniiut”: yak pravylno hotuvaty deruny [They won’t fall apart or turn blue: how to make deruny properly]. Ukrainska Pravda. Zhyttia. Advice from chefs on potatoes, starch, flour and egg; published recipe by chef Volodymyr Yaroslavskyi.
8. Yevhen Klopotenko. (6 October 2022). Zolotavi ta khrustki deruny na krupnii tertsi [Golden, crisp deruny on a coarse grater]. klopotenko.com. Published recipe (coarse grater, no flour, garlic, finished in the oven).
9. The Nutrition Source Editorial Team, reviewed by Walter C. Willett and Seyed Mohammad Mousavi. (Updated 7 August 2025). Potatoes. The Nutrition Source, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Potassium, fiber in the peel, solanine in green potatoes.
10. Oven-Baked Potato Pancakes. MyPlate Kitchen, U.S. Department of Agriculture; recipe credited to ChopChop Family. Published recipe baked in the oven: 2 tablespoons oil for the baking sheets, 425°F, 15–20 minutes, then turned and baked 10 more.
11. The Health News Team. (10 December 2025). Oven-baked potato pancakes (recipe). Sharp HealthCare. Published recipe baked in the oven on lightly oiled sheets: 425°F, 15–20 minutes, then turned and baked 10 more.
12. NHS. (page last reviewed 19 June 2023). How to eat less saturated fat. nhs.uk. Baking rather than frying; measuring oil with a teaspoon or using an oil spray; sour cream among foods high in saturated fat.
13. NHS. (page last reviewed 17 April 2023). Salt in your diet. nhs.uk. Daily salt limit for adults; black pepper, herbs and spices instead of salt.
14. Cleveland Clinic, with Julia Zumpano, RD, LD. (9 November 2020). Is Yogurt Good for You? Health Essentials. Swapping Greek yogurt in for some of the sour cream.
15. USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service. Leftovers and Food Safety. Refrigerator and freezer storage; reheating.
16. Jane Tuszynski. (30 November 2021). The Modern Potato Latke Was Not Inevitable. Folklife Magazine, Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. Latkes fried in oil for Hanukkah.
17. Yevhen Klopotenko. (No publication date given; updated 10 September 2026). Deruny z yablukom i tomatnym sousom [Deruny with apple and tomato sauce]. klopotenko.com. Deruny served with sour cream, cracklings or meat.

Disclaimer

The information in this article is provided for educational and informational purposes only. Heritage Healthy Kitchen makes no representations or warranties regarding the accuracy or completeness of any content on this site. Nutritional values are estimates only and will vary depending on the specific ingredients, brands, and measurements used. This content is not intended as dietary, medical, or professional nutritional advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare provider regarding any dietary needs or health conditions. Heritage Healthy Kitchen is not responsible for any outcomes resulting from the use of recipes or information published on this site.

Traditional Recipe Card

Traditional Deruny

Prep 15 minCook 25 minServes 4

Ingredients

The batter

• 750g (about 1⅔ lb) floury, high-starch potatoes, peeled
• 1 large onion, about 150g (5 oz), peeled
• 2 eggs
• 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour, or potato starch
• 1 teaspoon salt, plus a pinch for serving
• ½ teaspoon ground black pepper
• 4–5 tablespoons sunflower oil, for frying, plus more as needed

For serving

• Sour cream
• Fresh dill, chopped (optional)

Instructions

1. Grate: Peel the potatoes and grate them at once on the fine holes, alternating with the onion so the potato doesn’t darken.
2. Drain: Press out the extra liquid in a sieve; don’t squeeze it dry.
3. Batter: Stir in the eggs, flour, salt and pepper; the batter should be like thick sour cream. Fry straight away.
4. Fry: Heat the oil over medium to medium-high heat. Drop in about 2 tbsp batter per pancake, flatten to no more than 5mm and fry 2–3 min a side until golden.
5. Serve: Drain on paper towels, add a pinch of salt and serve hot with sour cream and dill.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Why do my deruny fall apart in the pan?
A common cause is young potatoes, which are short of starch, and the starch is what holds the batter together. Use old, floury potatoes, and if the batter is still loose, stir back in the starch that settles out of the liquid you pressed off.⁷

Why does the grated potato turn dark?
It oxidizes in the air, and the longer it stands the darker it gets. Grate the onion along with the potato and fry the batter as soon as it is mixed.^7,5

Do deruny need egg and flour?
The chefs’ recipes reviewed by Ukrainska Pravda all add an egg.⁷ Flour is less fixed: some recipes use a tablespoon or two, one uses potato starch instead, and one leaves it out altogether.^5,6,7,8

How are deruny different from latkes and placki?
They belong to the same family of grated potato pancakes. Latkes are the Ashkenazi Jewish version, fried in oil for Hanukkah, a holiday whose story celebrates a small vessel of oil.¹⁶ Deruny are Ukrainian home cooking, most often eaten with sour cream.^2,1 See our traditional latkes and Polish placki ziemniaczane.

Can I make deruny ahead or freeze them?
The batter should be fried as soon as it is mixed.⁵ Cooked deruny keep 3–4 days in the refrigerator and 3–4 months in the freezer; reheat them until hot all the way through.¹⁵

Is the Korosten Deruny Festival still held?
It has run since 2008, apart from 2014 and 2020. Since the full-scale invasion it has taken the form of small deruny fairs, and the 2026 festival was cancelled for security reasons.⁴

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