Polish plum dumplings (knedle): potato dough, a whole plum inside, buttered breadcrumbs
The sweet September dinner you wait for all year: soft potato dough wrapped around a whole Italian prune plum with a sugar cube where the stone was, boiled a few minutes and showered with breadcrumbs browned in butter and cinnamon sugar. Inside, the plum turns into hot, tangy jam. Sixteen from a kilo of potatoes.
Your own work in that: 50 min.
- Potatoes boiling 25 min
- Potatoes cooling 30 min
- Dough 15 min
- Shaping 20 min
- Cooking and topping 15 min
Step by step
0 / 7 doneBoil and rice the potatoes
Boil the potatoes in their skins 25 minutes, peel while hot and press through a ricer onto the counter. Spread out and cool completely, about 30 minutes. Yesterday's potatoes are best: dry and cold, they take less flour, so the dumplings are lighter.
Ingredients: 1000 g potatoes · 250 g plain flour · 2 tbsp potato starch · 1 pcs egg · ½ tsp salt
TipWarm potatoes soak up flour like a sponge and the dough turns gluey; you add more and the dumplings come out hard. Cold is half the battle.
Through the ricer, then cooled completelyBring the dough together fast
Make a well in the cold potatoes, add the flour, potato starch, salt, crack in the egg. Knead only until combined, a minute or two, into a soft, slightly tacky dough. Long kneading releases starch and makes glue.
TipThe test: pinch off a piece, roll a ball and boil it 3 minutes. Fell apart? Add a tablespoon of flour. Hard and rubbery? Less flour next time; this dough can't be fixed, so always test.
Briefly, only until it comes togetherPrepare the plums
Wash and dry the plums. Slit each lengthways on one side, remove the stone and put a sugar cube (or a teaspoon of sugar) in its place, then close the plum.
Ingredients: 16 pcs Italian prune plums · 16 tsp sugar cubes or granulated
Stone out, sugar inShape the dumplings
Divide the dough into 16. Flatten each piece on your palm into a 5 mm disc, set a plum in the centre, gather the edges up, seal thoroughly and roll between your palms into a smooth ball. No cracks and no spots thinner than paper: the juice would leak into the water.
Disc, plum, seal, roll into a ballCook in batches
Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to the boil and lower to a gentle simmer. Drop in 8 dumplings at a time, stir once from the bottom. When they float, cook another 4 minutes. Lift out with a slotted spoon.
TipA rolling boil breaks dumplings apart. The water should bubble gently, not churn.
A gentle simmer, four minutes after they floatBrown the breadcrumbs in butter
Melt the butter in a pan, add the breadcrumbs and fry over medium heat 3 minutes, stirring, until golden and fragrant. Mix the sugar with the cinnamon.
Ingredients: 80 g butter · 60 g breadcrumbs · 3 tbsp sugar · 1 tsp cinnamon
Golden crumbs, a nutty smellServe hot
Shower the dumplings with the buttered crumbs and cinnamon sugar. Eat at once: the plum inside is as hot as lava, warn the children. Fry leftovers in butter the next day; they turn crisp.
Crumbs, cinnamon sugar, a hot plum inside
Before you start
With apricots or strawberries
The same method: an apricot with a sugar cube in summer, a large strawberry in June. Strawberries cook a minute less.
Dough with curd cheese
500 g potatoes and 250 g curd cheese instead of a kilo of potatoes, the rest unchanged: lighter, more delicate dumplings, the only right kind in some homes.
They fell apart in the water
Too little flour, too hard a boil, or poorly sealed. Always cook a test dumpling and keep the water barely bubbling.
