Potato Dumpling

Instructions

• 1
  Bring well-salted water to a boil in a large pot for the dumplings.
• 2
  In a second pot, cook potatoes in their skins until semi-soft. Once cooled, peel them and grate finely onto a pastry board or into a large bowl. Add starch, flour, eggs, 1 teaspoon of salt, and quickly mix with a wooden spoon or by hand to form a soft but compact dough.
• 3
  On a floured table or pastry board, shape the dough into longer rolls (so they fit into the pot with water) with a diameter of 5 cm. Immediately place them into the salted boiling water. After a while, check that they are floating; otherwise, detach them from the bottom. Cook over low heat for 20–25 minutes.
• 4
  Melt the lard. Remove the cooked dumplings with a slotted spoon and place them into a bowl with the melted lard, coating them in it. This way, they won't dry out, harden, and will remain moist.
• 5
  Cut the roll into 1.5 cm wide dumplings.
• 6
  The dough should not be too thick or too thin. Therefore, add flour gradually to achieve the ideal consistency. Potato dough tends to thin out, so you must work quickly. To reheat cold dumplings, place them in a saucepan with a little water, bring to a boil, insert a steamer basket with the dumplings, and cover the saucepan with a lid. Prepared gnocchi can be cooled and optionally frozen. For this dish, you need potatoes of cooking type C. The final quantity of 1 kg is the amount of cooked, peeled, and cooled potatoes in their skins. Before you start preparing the potato dough, the potatoes must be completely cooled. Do not cook the potatoes until completely soft – the dough would then be too thin. Remember that boiling water must be ready for the potato dough. If you prepared the dough first and then started boiling the water, the dough would thin out. Therefore, it is necessary to prepare the dough as quickly as possible and put the dumplings to cook as quickly as possible. Always cook dumplings in a large amount of water. After 20 minutes, remove one dumpling from the pot, cut it open, and check if it is fully cooked through. If not, return it to the other dumplings and cook for another 5 minutes. If your potatoes are very floury, you don't need to add starch to the dough. The dumplings will be fluffier.