Potato dumplings are a very easy side but give each meal a feeling of a holiday. This probably just me, association dumplings with Christmas dinners. When potato dumplings are on the table, usually the red cabbage and goose or roast are not too far away!
How to Make Potato Dumplings Video
Different Kinds of These Dumplings
There are mostly three different potato dumplings:
- made from boiled potatoes
- made from raw, shredded potatoes
- made from 50% raw and 50% boiled potatoes
This recipe describes the version with the boiled potatoes and it is quite simple. Actually, there is not much to write about it other than using enough salt. I cannot stress than enough. If you don’t put enough salt into the potato mass, it won’t taste very well. So, taste some of the mass before you shape the dumplings and add more salt if needed.
Filling or no filling?
It is entirely up to you whether you want to put croutons into the center of your dumplings. The benefits – besides the taste – is, that they take some of the moisture from the dough and prevent the dumpling from being too moist and fall apart while cooking.
There is also the possibility to make these dumplings sweet instead of salty. In that case, a small apricot is used as a filling – very delicious, too!
Serving the Dumplings
In the video, I am using a mix of melted butter and parsley to top the dumplings before serving. A different, but very common method is to mix melted butter with some bread crumbs to top the potato dumplings. However, the meal you are serving with the dumplings should contain a nice gravy to go with them
Serve the dumplings fresh if possible. Leftovers can be cut into thick slices and fried in some butter.
Pin Potato Dumplings to Pinterest
Potato Dumplings Recipe
Ingredients
- 800 g peeled potatoes, starchy
- 1 egg
- 1 tsp. salt
- 150 g potato flour or potato starch or corn starch
- some ground nutmeg
- 2 slices dry bread or a roll from the day before
- 2 tsp. butter for frying
- some parsley
Instructions
- Boil the potatoes in salted water.
- When the potatoes are cooked all the way through, immediately remove the water, then put the pot back onto the hot stove for a moment so more water evaporates. You want your potatoes to be as dry as possible.
- Mash the potatoes until they are very fine mashed.
- Set aside and let cool until just warm.
- In the meantime, cut the bread into cubes and fry them in the butter until they are crisps from all sides – croutons.
- Add the egg, salt, and nutmeg to the warm potatoes and mix it in.
- Now graduately add the potato flour (starch) and mix it in until the potato mass has the right consistency.You might need a lot less or some more than in the recipe since it depends very much on your potatoes.
- When you can shape a sphere from the potatoes and it keeps its shape, then you have the right consistency.
- Now, take some of the potato mass and make a round, flat shape with it on the palm of your hand. Add 3 to 4 croutons to the center and close the mass on top of it (see video).
- Shape into a nice, round dumpling, cover with starch or potato flour and set aside until all dumplings are shaped.
- In a large pot, bring salted water to a boil. Then reduce the heat so it stops boiling but is still very close to being boiling.
- Add the dumplings to the salt water and close the lid. Let the dumplings float in the hot water for about 20 minutes.
- Remove the dumplings from the pot and serve with some parsley on top.
Thank you for the recipe! It was my first time making these, and they turned out perfectly! I can’t wait to try more of your recipes. ???
Wonderful! Thank you for your feedback!
Hi, is it possible to freeze or store them uncooked for a few days?
Thank you
Hi Olivia,
this is a very good question and I was about to answer that you can’t freeze them but decided to get other opinions and looked it up. So, a German food blogger recommends putting the dumplings onto a tray that fits into your freezer and freezing them separated so they don’t stick together. Then, when they are frozen, put them into a freezer bag and they will last approximately 3 months. To reheat, put them into simmering salt water for about 20 minutes. Good to know and I might do exactly that for Christmas!
Best,
Barbara
Fantastic! thanks you so much for the fast reply, will totally be doing this.
They turned into a nice potato and soggy crouton soup.I followed the recipe to a T and now I’m left with soup.
I’ll have to guess what happened. Maybe you had the wrong sort of potatoes or the water was boiling too much? Did you check out the video to see if I am doing anything different?
Best dumplings ever. Better than ones we had in Germany. Mixture was easy to handle, not sticky. Dumplings came out light.
My gramma has made us Pork Roast & “kaneedles” (sp) my entire life and it’s always been by far my favorite dish. She also made the kaneedles with pork sauerbraten.
Your recipe is a different variation than my grammas recipe.
For (our) traditional pork roast and kaneedles, she would make two pork butt roasts, seasoned with salt and pepper, with sliced onions for taste on top. And would very tightly cover roasts with tin foil. In the oven until the roasts would fall off the bone she would then skim out the onions, take the roasts out. And would add a little water if needed to the sides where the roast would brown. Scraping and mixing to get all that flavor. That would be our gravy. It wouldn’t be thickened at all, just as is. The taste is so good.
The kaneedles (which I really wish I would have asked her how to spell) are essentially what you’re calling Potato Dumplings. Cooked and raw potato’s, except we use old stale Kaiser rolls. Which we set out the day we use them to get them extra dry. We use a cheese cloth to squeeze all the water possible from the potato’s, which we use the super small star-like setting from the cheese grater, on the raw potatoes. And grate them under a pot of cold water. Then squeeze them dry, scrape them into a large bowl. Then slightly wet the bread ripping the, into small pieces. Squeeze them through the cheese cloth, add to potato mixture. Then depending on the serving size, add one to two eggs. Then mix it up all nice, then form the balls. Put into pots of salted boiling water and use the lid. Boil until they float to the top.
We serve them whole, and cut into pieces and pour the pork roast gravy and go to town eating them. Our family loves this recipe so much my Tante and I would always have competitions to see who could eat the most, always me! ?
The rest of this dish would include, a serving of sweet kernel corn, sauerkraut, and her scrumptious “Germany Potato Salad” which we gave it as a nickname. This recipe is also very different from the ones I’ve searched online for over the years.
She would boil the potatoes, peel the skin once cooked. And cut them into normal sized slices the whole length of the potatoes, end to end. Add Mayo, mustard, hard boiled eggs sliced into chunks, shredded dill pickles, chopped celery, and would add the dill pickle juice and stir. Salt and pepper the top and voila, best potato salad I’ve ever eaten. Also the only I’ll eat lol.
Once I was old enough I took over making the salad, I opted out of using the celery. I never liked chewing on them, I have an issue with certain textures in certain foods, which I felt didn’t feel right in the dish. Weird I know.
I hope you enjoy learning about my Gramma Emma’s Porkroast, or Sauerbraten and Kaneedles recipes. If anyone tries this variation, or has any tips for me, please let me know!
Sadly we lost Gramma, and I have a very hard time making the kaneedles on my own! Out of the many times I’ve tried, only have I been successful a few times! She didn’t have an exact recipe, just made from memory. And I don’t get the cooked to raw mix correctly half the time and my kaneedles will fall apart during the boiling process. Sad! Also I’d really appreciate it if anyone knows the correct spelling for Kaneedles. Thanks and enjoy!
Kartoffel Knödel or Kartoffel Klöße , the word Knaeedles is in the Dialect of the Region your Grandma came from, it would look like this in written Form -Knödel but sounds like this- Knädels. To the best of my recollection, normally the 2 dots over the Ä,Ö, or Ü makes it’s plural from singular..Hope this explains it..Michael ( over 57 years in the US)
That’s in part correct. The pronunciation depends on the region of Germany. While in the South of Germany, it might sound more like Knädel, in the North we speak it as it is written with an “ö”.
The plural does only apply if the Umlaut ä is used in the connection with an “u”. Example: 1 Haus … 2 Häuser or 1 Baum … 2 Bäume … but it’s NOT 1 Auto .. 2 Äutos … it has to be in the middle of the word.
But if the ä is used without the letter u, like in Mädchen, it is either 1 Mädchen or 2 Mädchen, it doesn’t change. So the dots don’t generally make the plural, they are additional letters in our alphabet that are pronounced different than a, o, and u.
can I use Panni Potato pancake mix to make Potato Dumplings?
If the package instructions say so, I guess you can. It will taste different though.
since Panni ….which i can’t find on shelves anymore…does this recipe make dumpling like that…spongey sticky center?
The Pfanni dumplings are usually the “half and half” version, my dumplings are a little different from that since they are only made with cooked potatoes and no raw potatoes in it.
My mom’s recipe is for half raw and half cooked, plus farina. Sadly, I lost her recipe in a house fire. Does anyone have a recipe similar to this?
That is called “Kartoffelklöße Halb und Halb”. I don’t have a recipe that contains farina though.
Hi Barbara,,when I stayed in Munchen the dumplings were very sticky they would stick to my knife they had the filling, and of all the dumplings I had in Germany they were the best.
Would adding extra starch give me that texture ??
best regards Ed
I don’t know if more starch will help to achieve that but my recipe makes some sticky dumplings, too.
Do you have a recipe for the half raw half mashed potatoe dumplings ? I visited Bavaria and fell in love with potatoe dumplings and I have yet to be able to recreate them. They always fall apart no matter what I do or are too dense and gross.
Hi Ashley,
I have to admit that I have the same problem here: I prefer the half/half potato dumplings but they always fall apart. I’ll make a video once I figured out why that happens!
Best,
Barbara
Just a tip on making the Halb und Halb Klöße, make sure to squeeze all the liquid out of the raw potatoes. When I make Halb & Halb Klöße I use cheesecloth to squeeze the liquid out of the raw potatoes. First, shred them like for hashbrowns, and then add the shredded potatoes to the cheesecloth and twist it tight until as much of the liquid from the potatoes is gone. You have to get rid of as much liquid as possible from the raw potatoes otherwise they will just fall apart while cooking. I really like your recipe for fleischkuekle, brings back some good old memories from when I lived in Nürnberg. Maybe I missed it but I did not see a recipe for sauerbraten, I have a good one if you wish to try.
Hi Martin,
thank you for your helpful tips.
I do have a recipe for Sauerbraten but not on the blog and I don’t know if it is as good as your recipe. Would you mind sending me yours so I can look at it? send it to mail[at]mygerman.recipes.
Best wishes to Nürnberg,
Barbara