Lefse!

Last night we followed a Norwegian family tradition of mine and made lefse. If you do not know what lefse is, it is rather like a very thin tortilla made of potatoes. If it is as thick as a regular flour tortilla, you have Limpe. Lefse is generally eaten spread with butter and sugar, then rolled up into a tube. There are many debates raging as to if the butter should be melted or not, and if the sugar is white or brown. In my family, we eat it with spreadable butter and white sugar. Luckily for me, I married into a family that also eats it in this manner. This means no arguing about proper preparation, just enjoyment of the food.

We made our lefse with some friends of ours, and followed my aunt's recipe. She makes the best lefse I've eaten, including better than that I have sampled in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark! Making her recipe does take some time, as some of the prep work needs to be done the night before. It is easy, so it is not a lot of fussing about to get ready.

So, to start the preparation of lefse, you need to have potatoes. Lots and lots of potatoes, about 5lb or so. Russet potatoes make the best lefse.






You then need to scrub the potatoes, peel them, and cut them up into chunks. Put them in a Very Large Pot and cover them with water. It is best if the pot is already located on top of a burner on the stove, as it becomes Very Heavy when filled with water and 5lb of potato chunks. Do not add any salt to your pot, just water.

Bring the potatoes to a boil, and boil until tender. This can take awhile if your potato chunks are not cut small enough. Once the potatoes are soft, drain off the water and then find a Strong-Armed Person. You will need the Strong-Armed Person to mash the potatoes, as there are a lot of them, and the pot is Very Large. I am lucky, I have such a person living in my house, and he was very happy to mash the potatoes for me. After the potatoes are mashed, you need to find a Very Large Bowl. This is because you now need to rice the potatoes into the bowl. I do not have a ricer, but discovered that a food mill on the smallest opening works just great. Again, the Strong-Armed Person is handy to have around for assistance.

While the assistant is smashing and mashing the potatoes, you will need to melt some butter, 1/2c of butter, which is an entire stick. You will need to use real butter, none of that margerine, low-fat oily stuff that masquerades as butter, but the real thing. You will have to get over the amount of fat in this recipe, as you are just going to add more when you actually eat it anyways.

Next, add the melted butter, 1/3c of heavy cream, and 1T of sugar to the potatoes in the bowl. Mix it up well. It will be stiff to mix, as it is mainly potatoes and not actual dough. Then make it into a nice ball, and wrap the ball up in a dishcloth. Let the ball in its cloth sit on the countertop overnight. I decided to leave mine in the bowl, as it was more convenient that way.

On the next day, our friends came over, and we mixed up the rest of the recipe. I took the dough out of its dishcloth, and added 1T of salt and 2 small cups of flour. At this point it's just easier to mix everything with your hands - especially seeing as your going to get them dirty anyways shortly.

Once everything is mixed, we made the dough into little balls and put them on wax paper so that they didn't stick to the countertop.

Then starts the rolling. It is best to use a floured pastry board and a grooved rolling pin with a floured cloth cover on it. The potatoes get very sticky and stick to Everything! So rolling away we go - we need to get the piece of lefse out to about 12-14" in diameter. This means it is so thin that you can see the markings on the pastry board thru it.

In order to get it off of the board and onto the griddle, you need to use a very thin profile turning stick. You must slide the stick between the board and the lefse, and then pick it up to put on the griddle. This takes practice to not tear into the lefse. It took us a few tries to get it right.

Here you can see the lefse on the griddle - it is a bit bigger than a medium-sized hand. You want to have the griddle hot so that the lefse cooks quickly. First you cook it on one side until the brown spots appear, and then you flip it over with a thin stick to brown the other side.


Once the lefse is cooked, you can either let it cool in a stack on the countertop, or spread it with butter and sprinkle it with sugar.




Roll it up into a tube and Eat! We were very hungry by the end of this cooking adventure, and luckily there was plenty of lefse for all to eat.