Potato pancakes — coarse-grated raw potato bound with egg, onion, and flour, fried crisp in sunflower oil. Smetana or mushroom sauce on top.
18th-century Polissia village invention, when potato cultivation reached the Pripyat marshes after the Northern Wars; the name from deraty (to grate). The dish spread south through Volyn and Galicia. Distinct from Belarusian draniki by the heavier onion and the Ukrainian preference for smetana-with-fried-pork-crackling on top.
Zhytomyr hosts an annual Deruny Festival in early September since 2008, with a 2-meter pan record from 2019 at 200 kg of potato. Lviv's Kumpel brewpub serves them with a mushroom-and-sour-cream sauce and a shot of horilka — the Galician taproom canon.
Lacy gold edges, soft starchy middle, onion sweetness coming through the potato. White smetana puddle on top, sometimes a black-brown mushroom sauce instead. Crispness fades fast — eat the moment they hit the plate. Salt and black pepper minimal but mandatory.
Grated potato must be squeezed in a muslin to drop 30-40% of its water, but the starch sediment from the drained liquid is added back — that starch is the binder that holds the cake without the egg making it omelette-textured. Pan oil at 175°C, single layer, no crowding.
Variations
Polissia village style (the original, with kvas-soured cream); Galician Lviv style with mushroom sauce (sub-cuisine Galician); Hutsul version stuffed with bryndza cheese (sub-cuisine Hutsul); Chernihiv version uses buckwheat flour as binder; the Bessarabian Black Sea version adds dill and feta.
On the Palate
Where Deruny sits in the Ukrainian flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 4
How it's made
5 steps · 30 min active + 3 min waiting
- 115 min
Grate 1 kg raw potatoes coarsely; squeeze in cloth to remove excess liquid.
Watch outSqueeze the grated potato hard in the cloth until it stops dripping — wet batter steams instead of crisping and falls apart.
- 25 min
Mix with 1 grated onion + 2 eggs + 60 g flour + salt + pepper.
- 33 min
Heat sunflower oil to medium-high in heavy skillet; spoon batter in 8 cm discs.
Watch outWait for the oil to shimmer and a shred to sizzle on contact — into cool oil the cakes soak up grease and go soggy.
- 48 min
Fry 4 min per side until crispy and golden.
Watch outLeave each cake alone until the underside is deep golden and lacy-crisp before you flip — flip early and it tears.
- 52 min
Drain on paper; serve hot with smetana or mushroom sauce.
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