German Potato Dumplings are a wonderful side dish idea. It's mostly served with delicious meals such as Sauerkraut and Sausage, Sauerbraten with Red Cabbage.
Potato Dumplings, aka Kartoffelknödel in German, are easy to prepare.
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📕 What are German Potato Dumplings?
The German Potato Dumplings are common round dumplings prepared with potato dough.
The dumplings are served as a savory side dish in all the German-speaking countries such as Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
Neighboring countries and former countries from the empire, such as the Autonomous Province of Bolzano (North Italy) and Slovenia, count these potato dumplings as their traditional food.
Potato Gnocchi from Italy resembles the German Potato Dumplings.
In fact, potato dough is quite a popular dough variety in Central Europe and other dumplings and noodles are prepared with this dough as well.
👄 German Names
Potato Dumplings are known as Kartoffelknödel or Kartoffelkloß in most parts of Germany.
In Austrian, we call the Erdäpfelknödel, in Bavaria the potato dumplings are known as Reibeknödel.
The word for dumpling in German is "Knödel/Knoedel or Kloß/Kloss".
In North Germany, they will say Kloß and in the southern regions Knödel.
The Potato is known as Kartoffel in German.
In Austria and Bavaria, potatoes are called Erdäpfel (literal translation, Earth apple).
🥔 Ingredients
Here is an overview of what you will need to make these from scratch at home. The detailed US and metric measurements are located in the printable recipe card further below.
- Potatoes - A mealy, easy to boil, variety. They shouldn't be too hard. Russet potatoes are a great choice!
- All-purpose Flour
- Corn Starch - If you don't have corn starch, use just all-purpose flour. Corn starch helps to bind and makes them a bit softer.
- Salt
- Nutmeg - Important flavor giver, don't skip adding a pinch!
- Egg - Also helps to keep your dumplings together when boiling them and adds flavor.
- Butter (optional) - Adds flavorful but not a must.
🔪 How to make them?
To prepare the potato dumplings, you will need to follow simple steps.
Step 1
Mash boiled potatoes.
Place mashed potatoes with flour, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and egg into a bowl.
Step 2
Combine to a smooth dough.
Shape into balls.
Step 3
Keep a pot with salt water to boil.
Drop dumpling balls into the boiling water.
Boil until they swim on top. Strain and serve up.
💡 Tips
We learned to make these dumplings in school (I went to school in Austria) and the teacher shared some tips with us.
- Prepare the dough with hot potatoes, it will blender better.
- Don't over mix your potato dough or else your dumplings will turn out stone hard.
- Always use salt water to boil. They just turn out better.
- Shape them while the water is boiling, and drop them into the water. Don't leave them to sit for all too long on your kitchen counter.
- You want your water to boil lightly, not too much. Too much movement can damage your dumplings.
- After dropping the dumplings into the water, check if they are not sticking to the bottom of your pot. Loosen them up with a cooking spoon.
- When you see them floating to the surface, leave them there for another minute or so before you take them out. That's to make sure they are properly cooked through.
- Don't overcrowd your pan.
🍱 Storing
If you plan on eating the potato dumplings within 48 hours, prepare the dough and store it in the fridge until you get time to boil and eat them.
I think the dumplings taste better when freshly boiled.
You can boil the potato dumplings and keep them in the fridge, but then they tend to get chewy and hard.
To reheat, place them into the oven and gradually heat up for a few minutes.
To store the German potato dumplings over a longer period of time, freeze them.
Prepare the dough, form the dumplings, cook them and then wrap them in a clean wrap.
Freeze the potato dumplings.
To take the frozen dumplings out, defrost them in room temperature water and cook them again so that they get hot.
🍴 Serving
The savory potato dumplings are usually served with saucy/gravy-rich meat meals, such as Beef Goulash.
Also, fall-themed meals such as a venison dish as served with these potato dumplings. Here are some more ideas.
💭 FAQs
No, you can't skip adding the egg to this recipe. The egg helps in keeping your dumplings together.
Because you don't get potato starch everywhere, and I personally never have it in my pantry. Why buy an ingredient for just one recipe, right? But you are, of course, free to switch the all-purpose + corn starch with potato starch in this recipe. Potato starch would be a more suitable choice, but it's not the only choice.
Yes, there is a Bavarian variation where they add 2-3 bread croutons as a filling. It adds a crunch to the dumpling center. Flatten a dumpling ball in your hand into a circle and place 2-3 croutons into the center. Wrap the potato dough around the croutons to close the dumplings and boil as directed in the recipe. You can also fill your potato dumplings with chopped bacon or ground beef (or corned beef) or chopped sautéd mushrooms.
They can fall apart if you didn't measure your ingredients (sorry, but cups won't do it) or if you skipped adding an egg. When shaping them, make sure that they are pressed and rolled into a round ball. The dumplings need to be added to boiling water, never cold water, and the water shouldn't be bubbling too much because that's how the dumplings can fall apart with the movement.
Potato dumplings will get rubbery and hard when boiled for too long. Also, overworking your dough can result in hard and chewy dumplings. If you measure and add too much flour, your dumplings can turn harder, too. Choose easy cook-through mealy potatoes, instead of hard potato varieties.
Dear Reader, how and with what are you planning to serve the potato dumplings?
📖 Recipe
German Potato Dumplings Recipe
Ingredients
- 10.6 Ounces Potato boiled, about 3 potatoes
- 1 Cup All-purpose Flour + some more flour to shape dumplings
- ⅓ Cup Corn Starch
- Pinch Salt
- Pinch Nutmeg
- 1 Egg
- 1 Tablespoon Butter melted, optional *See Notes
Instructions
- Boil potatoes and peel.10.6 Ounces Potato
- Place your peeled boiled potatoes in a bowl. Mash them.
- Add the all-purpose flour and corn starch to the potato mash. Season with a pinch of salt and finely grated nutmeg.1 Cup All-purpose Flour, ⅓ Cup Corn Starch, Pinch Salt, Pinch Nutmeg
- Mix everything together.
- Make a slight well in the center and drop the egg into it. Add the butter too if you want your dumplings to turn out more smooth.1 Egg, 1 Tablespoon Butter
- Mix the potato dough ingredients and start to create a dough by forming it gradually. The end result should be a smooth dough. Do not over work your potato dough or else it will turn out hard!
- Keep a pot with salt water to boil.
- Now shape your dumplings by taking some from the dough and rolling it into a round form. It helps to roll the dumplings out with flour because they can get sticky. Use up all the dough.
- Once the water is cooking, drop your dumplings into the water. Make sure that they don't stick on the bottom of the pot. Gently move them. Also, the water shouldn't bubble too wild or else the dumplings may fall apart.
- Leave the dumplings cook uncovered until they swim to the top.
- Allow them to swim to the surface, watch them for a minute max and take them out with a slotted spoon.
- Strain and serve up.
Notes
- You may or may not add butter. This is up to you. I think the dumplings turn out more smooth with the butter, but if you want to cut on fats, then you can skip the Tbs.
- The corn starch makes the dumplings more elastic and maybe a bit lighter. You can choose to skip the corn starch and use simply all-purpose flour only instead.
- Do not skip the nutmeg. You need the nutmeg in the dumplings for flavor.
- Calorie per serving is for one dumpling.
My father would make them. Then my my mother would make a pork roast, gr Gravy and sauerkraut. What a delicious meal and great memories of my parents great memories of my parents!!
My father would make them. Then my my mother would make a pork roast, gravy and sauerkraut. What a delicious meal! When I make this it reminds me of fond memories!
Our mom would wrap the dough around a small plum, boil, then roll the dumpling in bread graham cracker crumbs and sugar, then bake in the oven to brown them. Piercing this dessert with a fork, the cooked plum juice would squirt out. Delicious. Hard to find that variety of plum these days
Oh yes I have a recipe for that too, but this one is with apricots instead of plums. It's called Marillenknödel (Marille is the Austrian-German word for apricots). You can use plums instead. The plums you refer to are known as Zwetschgen in Austria and Bavaria. Others might call them Quetsch and they are small prune plums.
My brother-in-law used to make the knodels with raw shredded potatoes, caraway rye bread, and onion. And
serve them with what he called sour gravey ( hint of vinegar) from beef roast. Boy were they good. May have
been his own receipe as he also was a chef in small restaurants.
The sour gravy must have been a Sauerbraten gravy. I'm intending to share this recipe next year. Well, I'm going to try your brother-in-law's recipe next. 🙂 Thanks for sharing this with us.
My family has made what we call Knodels. You boil potatoes, once they've cooled (overnight in fridge) then they get shredded, placing shredded potatoes onto a large baking tray or platter, add some salt and AP flour. That's the whole recipe, potatoes, salt and flour. Then we run them between our hands until flour and potatoes are thoroughly mixed together, then it's time to shape them into about softball sized balls and drop in boiling water and cook, once they float on top, cook for additional 10 minutes. Once you remove them to a plate, cut one into bite sized chunks and smother with gravy. These knodels are usually served with a meat such as turkey, roast beef or roast pork, or cooked in sauerkraut juice for flavor. I've eaten these my entire life and love them, I make about 35 of them for Thanksgiving or Christmas meal, my children and grandchildren love them as well. This recipe was handed down from my grandmother and still going to new generations. In our home, no holiday meal is complete without them. I'm 63 years old and have never had knodels any other way. Have you ever heard of this specific recipe?
Hi Barbara, no I haven't heard of this specific recipe. Where did your family come from in Germany? When you shred boiled potatoes, don't they turn mashed? My version is a Bavarian Potato dumpling recipe, and more precisely close to the Munich area. Thanks for sharing, that's interesting what you wrote.
Fill large bowl with 6 to 7 loaves of white bread shredded into bite size bits. Flavor with salt and pepper to taste. Add 6 to 8 eggs and a few handfuls parsley flakes. Drizzle with milk to moisten, don't soak. Mix well with hands just like mixing eggs and seasoning into meat to make meatloaf or meatballs. Bread will condense down. Meanwhile, put very large kettle, salted water to boil. Fill 3/4 full, leaving gap at top. Dough should be yellowish, and pressed into a tight mound. Scoop softball size ball and work it into a tightly packed ball. Once water is at full boil place a ball on water, not up above, and let go. Jerk hand up fast away from scalding water. Place another in one by one till there are 4 to 5 in kettle. Use wide strained spoon to loosen gently from bottom. They sink before they float. Cook total 15 minutes turning over in water. Scoop out into large bowl' cover with cloth. If they fall apart, you didn't use enough eggs, added too much milk, didn't press into tight ball or cooked too long. Once done we poured turkey au jus over cut into bite size pieces had these Bavarian bread dumplings at Christmas and thanksgiving. For everyday use, can be made smaller. For stuffing, cut heart and liver of bird, saute chopped large onion, add meet cook till no pink is seen. Set aside and shred bread as per dumplings, add pepper, salt, paprika, an egg, and top with liver onion mix. Mix loosely, do not compress, stuff turkey and bake, till fully cooked, remove stuffing, serve seperately.
Thanks for sharing your version Patricia and the stuffing option.
My mother made these, just thinking makes me miss her. She also made these using half cooked and half raw (what a job) She was from Bavaria and of course all her friends looked forward to dinners. I will make these.
We boil our dumplings in sauerkraut with the kraut juice. It gives the dumplings a great flavor. When we have leftovers we cut the dumplings in slices and fry them in butter. Thanks
Yeah, we do this too sometimes. Mainly in fall and winter when the new batch of crock pot Sauerkraut is ready. Thanks for sharing. Looks like you enjoyed them, thanks for the rating too.
I make mine with roladen and rotkohl. There are also wonderful cut up and fried in butter and smothered in bacon and fried onions!!
Oh yes I love Rouladen and Rotkohl with Knödel. 🙂
Hi Helen:
I like your webseite. Here just a tip: On your Potatoedumpling recipe you mentionthat they are also known as Reibeknoedel. That is not quite correct, because Reibeknoedel (in Bavaria also know as Ritschiklnoedel) are made with raw POTATOES. Then ther are also Halfand-Half knoedel, which are half boiled and half raw grated potatoes.
Keep up the good work.
Saludos, Sigi
Hallo Sigi, danke für den Tip, dass habe ich nicht gewusst. Our potato dumplings are not that complicated in Austria but we are not the experts in potato dumplings That honor is reserved to our Bavarian friends. Thanks again for sharing your knowledge with us, much appreciated.