Dumplings from the Old Country

My dad's heritage goes back to Czechoslovakia, Poland, Bulgaria, and Hungary.  I lovingly call him the "Bo-Hunk" :) His mom and most of the women on her side grew up making potato dumplings.  Over the years my dad has introduced the technique for making these dumplings with the family favorite recipe to eat them.  Not only do I know how to make them, but all my kids have been introduced to this "Old Country" meal.  My oldest child is the only one who seems to appreciate this tasty tradition besides me, my siblings, and the other extended family.  Winter season seems to remind us of this favorite so we decided to make a batch of potato dumplings but this time I chronicled making these family favorites with some pictures!  The recipe is simple but it takes a good bit of arm muscle to put these together so the comfort for eating this much starch is that I got a work out making them!  My next blog will be on how to use cook with them.  By themselves they are  not so great, however.  So let's get started!

Ingredients:
Potatoes (we use regular Idaho)
Flour
large pot of water
wax paper (optional)
2 measuring cups ( 1 cup or 1/2 cup size)

1.  Peel several potatoes.  As you can see here, I did about 10 potatoes.  These take several hours to make so I usually set aside a half a day or several hours, hense the 10 potatoes...because I probably will not make another batch this year!  I will freeze them and use them throughout the year and, since only my son and I like them, this should be plenty to keep us fat & happy for awhile!

2.  Cut up the potatoes in pieces and get them boiling until they are soft.  I usually stick a fork in them and if the fork will not stay in the potato, they are done.  The smaller pieces are just so it will cook faster.
3. When the potatoes are soft, drain all the water out of them.  Do NOT rinse them with cool water or add any other ingredients to them ( We add no milk or butter for mashed potatoes but if you end up giving up on the project, you may still have some potatoes left over to make into mashed potatoes:)).

4.  Mash 'em!  I usually put the potatoes through the mixer so they are smooth and without lumps.  Homestyle potatoes do not work for this recipe so be sure to get them smooth but do NOT add any liquid.

5.  Now its time to make our dumplings.  My mother-in-law gave me this cool Tupperware mat.  It's larger than a cookie sheet and heavier than wax paper but you can use any of these items to work on your dumplings.  It's kind of a messy job so this makes for easier clean up.  I am not sure what my ancestors did for this part of the project?!

    I store my flour in the freezer so now that trick comes in handy!  I place one cup of potatoes and one cup of flour on my paper.  The technique is to begin kneading these two ingredients together into one dumpling.  Usually the one cup ratio is difficult to begin with so try the 1/2 cup flour to 1/2 cup potatoe mash first.  This is still challenging to do so even my 10 year old daughter needed help with the 1/2 cup  ratio.  Start with a small amount of both and begin kneading them together. Slowly, add more and more of each until ALL the ingredients are fused together. The cool flour is a help to the hot potaoes.  No, you cannot skip any of the flour! 

6.  When you finally get one of these balls finished go back and make sure there are no "cracks" on the outside of your dumpling.  This is an important step since they will fall apart if you do not make them smooth.  My dad says that a "pro" like his aunts and mom could put together a 1 cup ratio dumpling in about 20 minutes.  That is one dumpling, folks!  So my son, who is naturally competive, set his timer and put together a 1/2 cup dumpling in 18 minutes, but he was not ready to keep that pace with the rest of them! :)

7.  Now its time to cook them once more.  In a large dutch oven, get your water boiling once again.  Put in 2-3 dumplings at the most.  The goal here is to have your dumplings float to the top.  It takes about 15-20 min for some of the dumplings to float on the top.

 8.  I know its hard to imagine these dumplings able to float since they feel about 1 pound each but if you have smoothed out the cracks and patiently wait for them to rise to the boiling surface, you will receive your reward!
9.  Place them on a plate to cool. Below is one that cooked and started to fall a part and another one that did well which I have cut in half so you can see the dense inside of this dumpling.

starting to come apart. 

  Cut in half.  Quite dense, don't you think?

9.  STORING YOUR DUMPLINGS:  The best or simplest way we have found is to wrap each one in cellophane or some wrap and put them in one large freezer bag that seals well.  The individual wraps allow us to take one out at a time to defrost rather than the whole batch.  Usually 1-2 dumplings is plenty for 2-4 people eat.  If you taste them as is, you might not like them...I don't!  Next time, a recipe with these dumplings.