Secret Sauce 19 - Xminus1

Lefse is a scandinavian potato flatbread. It has a mildly sweet taste and I normally prepare it as a dessert by buttering and sprinkling with granulated sugar on one side, rolling it up, and cutting it into finger food sized bites. Preparing and sharing lefse is one of the only Norwegian traditions I do. I make lefse once a year -- either for Thanksgiving or around Christmas. When I make lefse I make large batches. Scratch-made food is a great gift. And though the preparation/frying time increases with the batch size. The not-insignificant cleaning time stays mostly the same.

Cooking tools

- Flat griddle (can use a frying pan on a stovetop too)
- Lefse flipper
- Rolling pin with rolling pin cover (you can just use a sock and rolling pin)
- A pastry rolling board with cover (it’s really nice to have a spare cover in case the first gets wet)
- Potato ricer
- A big pot (8qts work well)
- Baking sheet
- Mixing Bowl

Ingredients (~40 lefse)

- 5 lbs of potatoes (big russets are the starchiest potatoes and will produce the most workable lefse dough. However, yukon gold tastes better. I like to do a mixture: 3 lb yukon gold + 2 lb russet)
- 1 stick butter
- 3 ¾ cup flower (and a lot of extra flower to keep rolling surfaces coated)
- 2.5 tsp salt
- 5 tsp sugar
- 1 ¼ cup heavy cream

Prepping the potatoes (the night before)

Fill pot with water and salt and heat to a boil. Wash the potatoes. Boil until soft -- use a fork to test(~25 min). Drain water and let the potatoes cool enough to handle (don’t let them fully cool). Skin potatoes and remove all dark/tough growths from the potatoes. Dice the potatoes into chunks small enough for the potato ricer. Rice the potatoes while they are warm into a bowl/pot. Melt 1 stick of butter into the hot riced potatoes (dice the butter and mix it up!)

Transfer hot buttery potatoes to baking sheet and allow to cool on counter (the goal is to get moisture out of the potatoes). Transfer tray to refrigerator overnight uncovered (again we’re drying these things out).

Prepping the lefse dough

Hand blend flour, salt, sugar, heavy cream, and sugar with the riced potatoes from the previous night. Prep dough balls -- firmly hand roll dough to balls slightly larger than golf balls. Place on baking sheet and put in the fridge.

Preparing to roll and grill

Heat your griddle to 400-450 F (If you’re in the groove of grilling these things you can turn it up to decrease the cook time). Prepare your rolling surface and rolling pin with a generous coating of flour. The flour will prevent moisture from being transferred from the lefse balls to the rolling surface or to the rolling pin. Be sure to keep these things coated in flour! If wet spots develop on either surface rolling the lefse will become very difficult. You can use a sharp knife to scrape down sticky spots that develop. Follow up with excess flower and the spot and you should be able to recover.

Rolling and Grilling

Grab a dough ball from the fridge and roll it out on the surface. The goal is pretty thin -- thin enough to almost be transparent. Transfer rolled lefse onto the griddle using the lefse flipper -- gently slide flipper under the middle of the lefse, gently lift up the lefse with the stick, if you experience resistance gently sweep under the lefse with the lefse flipper, place an end of the lefse on to the edge of the griddle and lower ½ of the lefse onto the griddle, then roll the lefse stick transfer the other half of the lefse to the griddle. Allow the lefse to grill on one side (30-60s) (until some light brown marks form). Flip and cook the remaining side for (30-45s)

Transfer cooked lefse to a place to cool before stacking (they can start to stick together if stacked).

Storage

Fold the cooled lefse sheets in half twice. Stack 3-5 pieces and put into large ziplock bag
Store in refrigerator for short term or store in freezer for long term