There’s nothing like a fried, shredded vegetable pancake to fill you up and bring you comfort. This recipe definitely fits the bill—without grains, gluten, dairy or nuts.
You can make these pancakes with potatoes for a traditional latke, or use shredded turnips, rutabaga, celery root, parsnips, sweet potato, yam, or even butternut squash for a more nutritious, GAPS-legal and Paleo-friendly variation. My favorites are celery root/potato and turnip.
If you are on GAPS or other gut healing diet, these pancakes are a great way to make sure you’re getting enough carbs without consuming the grains or fruit sugars that make your health issues worse.
After you make these a couple of times, you will quickly memorize the ratio of shredded root veggie to onion to egg, and you’ll find the seasonings you like best, too. Then it will be easy to whip up some pancakes any time, with whatever root veggies you have on hand, without a recipe.
Easy Root Vegetable Pancakes
This super easy, nutritious root vegetable pancake recipe will fill you up and bring you comfort—without grains, gluten, dairy or nuts.
Ingredients
- 5 medium sized potatoes OR 4-5 small turnips OR 2-4 medium rutabagas/celery roots (about 10 cups of shredded root vegetables)
- 1/2 to 1 medium onion, to taste
- 2 pasture raised eggs, beaten
- Several pinches of sea salt
- Other seasonings, to taste (parsley, garlic, chives, chile powder, cumin, etc.)
- 4 Tbsp. coconut oil, butter, schmaltz, bacon grease, or pastured lard
Instructions
- If you are using rutabaga, celery root or butternut squash, peel them thoroughly before grating.
- In the food processor, grate/shred the root veggies and the onion together for a total of about 10 cups of shreds. (You can obviously use a box grater for this, but I think it's exhausting and time consuming.)
- Salt the shreds and let sit for 10 minutes. The veggies will "sweat" a bit.
- Use your hands to put the shredded veggies into a nut milk bag, bundle of cheesecloth or fine sieve. (I find using a nut milk bag to be easiest.)
- Squeeze as much liquid out of the veggies as you can so the shreds are as dry as possible.
- Place the dried shreds into a bowl and add 2 beaten eggs and seasonings.
- Mix thoroughly with your hands to separate and coat all the shreds in the egg.
- Heat a skillet to medium heat and melt about 1/8 inch of coconut oil, butter, schmaltz (chicken fat) bacon grease or lard into it.
- With your fingers, grab a small "nest" of shredded veggies and place it onto the hot, oiled skillet. You should be able to fit at least four "nests" onto the skillet. Press them flat into pancakes with your spatula.
- Cook till golden brown, then flip and cook the other side.
- Keep finished pancakes in a warm oven until you are ready to serve them.
- These pancakes go great with yogurt, sour cream or homemade applesauce, and they also freeze and reheat well too.
Courses Side Dish, Snack
Recommended for This Recipe

This sounds great – I am glad to have another way to cook veggie pancakes!
I would love to have you share this on Thursday at Tasty Traditions: http://myculturedpalate.com/
Thanks for introducing another way of cooking pancakes. I love pancakes until now it reminds me of my childhood days when my mama usually prepare it for my snacks, quite nostalgic here. We can always try to shape it up to look attractive for the kids right? I can always relate with little ones since I myself is a child at heart who loves to enjoy along with kids.I find it nutritious and more delightful eating vegetable at the same time.
These sound tasty! thanks for sharing on Natural Living Monday! I am excited to see what you have to share this week.
This looks a super way to get more veggies into our diet and one I’m bookmarking for reference. Thank you so much for sharing this with us at Seasonal Celebration Sunday and best wishes on Thanksgiving! Rebecca x
What a fun recipe, I can’t wait to try this! Happy Thanksgiving!
Thanks for linking up at our Gluten Free Fridays party! I have tweeted and pinned your entry to our Gluten Free Fridays board on Pinterest! 🙂
We have a great collection of recipes going to get us ready for menu planning! Hope to see you this Thursday for another Gluten Free Fridays link up! It will be live at 7:05 eastern US time. Cindy from vegetarianmamma.com
Mmm, these look crisp, just like I like them. It can be hard to find recipes without grains, thanks. And thanks for sharing on Hearth & Soul Hop. 🙂
Wishing you and your family a very Happy and Blessed Thanksgiving. Thank you so much for sharing with Full Plate Thursday and hope to see you soon!
Miz Helen
That looks really delish. I haven’t tried that.
That must be so nutritious.
Yum! I love making these. I’ve recently had to start making these because my toddler got picky all of a sudden and won’t touch any veggie but peas! *Sigh.* So frustrating! But because these get crunchy, he tears them up and I’m happily smiling (inside… so not to make a big deal).
So easy and so delicious!
This is the only way my 4 year old will touch root veggies, too! And I love using untraditional veggies that have a lot of nutrition, like rutabaga and parsnips. Thanks for commenting!
The standard potato version of these with tomato sauce was a staple meal in our house growing up too due to its low costs and tasty appeal to all the family.
These are very frugal and so yummy! I haven’t tried tomato sauce—great idea!
I don’t know how to copy your recipe except by hand –> not doing that. Please let me know if there is another way.
Even leaving a comment is difficult – difficult to edit.
Thanks,
thank you for sharing with Kids in the Kitchen! pinned, tweeted and shared on fb!