Kroppkakor Recipe - Swedish Potato Dumplings with Meat (2024)

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Course: Appetizer, Main Course, Snack

Cuisine: Scandinavian

Servings: 8 people

Prep Time: 1 hour hour 15 minutes minutes

Cook Time: 20 minutes minutes

FILLING

• ▢ 1 cup leftover meat, diced or shredded (see above)
• ▢ 4 slices bacon
• ▢ 2 shallots, minced fine
• ▢ 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme

DOUGH

• ▢ 2 pounds russet potatoes
• ▢ 2 eggs
• ▢ 1 cup flour
• ▢ Salt and black (or white) pepper, to taste
• ▢ Vegetable oil, for frying

• Preheat the oven to 425F. Poke the potatoes all over with a fork and wrap them in foil. Set them in the oven to bake for 1 hour.

• Meanwhile, to make the filling, fry the bacon in a pan over medium-low heat until crispy. Remove and chop it fine. Add the minced shallots to the pan and cook them in the bacon fat until soft and translucent, about 3 minutes. Mix together the chopped bacon, shredded meat, thyme and cooked shallots, along with some of the bacon fat in the pan, in a bowl. Set aside.

• When the potatoes are done, cut them in half to release heat. As soon as they are cool enough to handle, but still warm, peel and run them through a potato ricer or food mill. If you don't have either, Peel and mash them well. Put the potato into a bowl.

• If you are making caramelized onions, start them now.

• When it is cool enough to not curdle the eggs, generally warm to your hand but not unpleasantly hot, mix in the flour, salt and pepper and then the eggs and mix well. Very quickly this will become dough-like, and at that point you will want to knead it. If the dough is still very sticky, add some more flour.

• To make the dumplings, roll out the dough on a floured surface until it is about 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Cut circles out with a cutter or a wineglass or somesuch. Use a thin metal spatula to lift a circle off the counter and hold it in your off hand. Add about a heaping teaspoon of filling (depending on how large your circles are) to the center of the circle in your hand. Lift up another dough circle and place it on top. Pinch the edges closed and gently shape the dumpling into a fat disk. Set on a baking sheet that's either been floured or that has parchment paper in it.

• Repeat this with the rest of the dough, re-rolling and reforming the scraps as needed, until the dough or the filling is all used up.

• Heat to about 350F enough vegetable oil to come up to a depth of about 1 inch in a heavy pan. Turn your oven to "warm" and set a cooling rack placed on a baking sheet inside. Fry 2 or 3 dumplings at a time -- you don't want them to touch when frying or else they will stick to each other -- only until golden brown, about 2 minutes per side. Serve hot.