Thüringer Klöße

As tradition built it

Serves 4. The dumplings tell you when they are done.

Ingredients

Thüringer Klöße are made by cue: the raw potato pressed until the cloth is dry, the starch kept, the dumplings simmered and never boiled hard and lifted when they float. The ratio is the sources' and no source gave a time per batch, so none is given here.

• 1kg floury potatoes, raw, peeled
• 500g floury potatoes, boiled and riced
• to taste salt
• ½ roll white bread, cubed
• as needed fat, for browning the bread cubes

Method

1. Grate the raw floury potatoes fine and press them hard in a cloth until they are dry. Let the pressed liquid stand, pour off the water and keep the starch that has settled.
2. Mix the raw potato, the starch and the riced boiled potato with salt into a dough; some cooks scald part of the raw potato with hot milk or water first to bind it.
3. Brown the bread cubes in hot fat. Form large dumplings with wet hands, pushing a few of the cubes into the centre of each.
4. Lower them into salted water at a simmer, never a rolling boil, and cook until they rise and float, then a little longer. Lift them with a slotted spoon.
5. Serve with roast meat and its gravy, with sauerbraten or with mushrooms; the dumpling is for the sauce.

What a modern chef changes

The starch weighed, the water held at a temperature

Rung 4

Method

1. Weigh the starch that settles from the pressed water and add it all back; it is the dumpling's own binder, and a cook who throws it away adds flour and ruins the texture.
2. Press the raw potato in a potato ricer lined with cloth, then in a cheese press if there is one; the drier the raw potato, the lighter the dumpling.
3. Hold the water at 90 degrees with a thermometer; the tradition's "never a boil" is this number.
4. Brown the bread cubes in brown butter and a little marjoram, which is Thuringia's own spice in the heart of its own dumpling.