Recipe This | Leftover Potato Cakes In Air Fryer (2024)

Have you made potato cakes from mashed potatoes yet? These leftover potato cakes in the air fryer are delicious and just use a few simple ingredients alongside leftover mash.

Did you ever have leftover mashed potatoes and don’t know what to do with it? Well, this is what Chef Dom makes with his every time and every time we air fry potato cakes, we always argue over who gets the last one.

This leftover potato cakes recipe was originally shared back in 2018 and updating with new photos and better tips and tricks for making the best potato cakes in the air fryer.

Potato Cakes

Have you heard of potato cakes? Or you might know them as air fryer potato patties, air fryer potato pancakes or air fryer potato fritters.

They are delicious and a fun alternative to air fryer gnocchi for using up leftover mashed potatoes.

Picture the scene, you have just had a big roast dinner and you have loaded your leftovers into the fridge for saving for later.

Everybody helped themselves and the meat, the gravy and the cheese sauce soon went, as well as those spare roast potatoes, because lets face it, nobody leaves roasties.

Because all the gravy has long gone, nobody wants the mash, but with mashed potato cakes it doesn’t need the gravy, instead it needs plenty of cheese.

These mashed potato cakes can also be cooked over foil and then you can lift them out by the foil, and they don’t make any mess at all in your air fryer basket i.e. no need to clean it!

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Can You Air Fry Mashed Potatoes?

Yes, you can air fry mashed potatoes and you can simply cook a load of potatoes in the air fryer and then mash them like you would normally.

But what I much rather do, is use up leftover mashed potatoes and air fry this instead.

Can You Air Fryer Leftover Mashed Potatoes?

Yes, you can reheat mashed potatoes in the air fryer, and I recommend you have a good read of our leftover mashed potatoes recipe. It’s a delicious quick method and perfect for when you have a few leftovers you want to cook together.

Though if you want to transform your leftover mash into something special I recommend making mashed potato cakes.

What Are Mashed Potato Cakes?

Mashed potato cakes are just how they sound.

Potato cakes from mashed potatoes.

Into a bowl you add leftover cold mashed potatoes, cheese, flour and a few other favourite leftovers and then use flour, breadcrumbs or oats to bind it all together.

You then shape them like mashed potato patties.

Potato Cakes Without Flour

When making a potato cakes recipe you will need something that can bind them together and so that they don’t turn to mushy mash as you air fry them.

The easiest option of course, is some potato cakes with flour, but if you want to bypass flour then you can swap it for some gluten free oat flour or something similar. This product is my favourite for an easy flourless swap.

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Mashed Potato Cakes Air Fryer Ingredients

Mash – Plenty of leftover mashed potatoes. The more leftover mash = the more delicious, mashed potato cakes you can make.

Cheese – Don’t be shy, add plenty of cheese to your mashed potato mixture. I love using a nice cheddar or some red Leicester or my all time favourite is double Gloucester.

Breadcrumbs – I recommend rather than flour, that you use breadcrumbs in your leftover mashed potato cakes. It gives a much better texture and helps make them crispy.

Seasonings – I prefer to keep things simple with salt, pepper and some dried chives but you can add in extra seasonings too if you want a different flavour.

Then for the kitchen gadgets that we have used in these potato cakes from leftover mashed potatoes it has just been our Philips air fryer. We have this one and its wonderful for many types of air fryer recipes.

Plus, we recommend you head over to our air fryer recipes category as we have more than 500 tried and tested air fryer recipes and have been air frying for 10 years.

How To Make Potato Cakes?

• Bowl. To air fry your potato cakes I recommend you start with a big bowl and load it up with all your ingredients.
• Mix. Then mix, mix, mix until you have a mixture that is well coated in everything, and the cheese and breadcrumbs are well combined.
• Patties. Next shape your air fryer potato cakes like patties. Think the size of our air fryer frozen fishcakes.
• Foil. Then add a layer of foil to the air fryer basket, add your patties, spreading them out so that they are not over one another and then air fry for 10 minutes on foil at 180c/360f.

And I am sure you can see now how easy it is to make air fryer mashed potato cakes from leftovers and how you can do the same.

How Long To Cook Potato Cakes In Air Fryer?

The cook time for air fryer potato cakes is JUST 10 minutes cooked on the foil and then they will be piping hot, crispy on the outside and fluffy in the inside. And of course, do check out our podcast episode about using foil in the air fryer.

Listen To Air Fryer Potato Cakes

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More Air Fryer Leftover Ideas

• Air Fryer Leftover Turkey Pie
• Air Fryer Leftover Turkey Calzone
• Air Fryer Leftover Turkey Burgers
• Air Fryer Leftover Stuffing Muffins
• Air Fryer Prime Rib Hash

Your mashed potato cakes recipe is below, note you can print it out with or without photos, adjust servings, or click between metric and imperial depending on where you are in the world.

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