Traditions

Lefse

Hello fellow chefs! Throughout my childhood my family has always made one type of food, and that is lefse. The comfort of my childhood consisted of a soft Norwegian flatbread, a smear of butter, topped with sugar and rolled up. I fondly remember the first time making it with my grandma. With all the items ready for preparation, the rolling pin with grooves, a wooden stick, the lefse pan, and of course plenty of flour. My cousin, sister, and myself all had a designated place, while my grandma handed use the already prepared dough. The cooking was outrageously hard, I will not bore you with details but lets just say there was plenty of mistakes being made. My amazing grandma tried her hardiest to teach us each step, and helped us along the way, but that did not stop the endless amounts of burned and misshapen lefse. We all were amazed by our misfortune of a result, but as they say "Practice makes perfect."While I loved preparing the food. I mainly enjoyed the time I had with my family. My grandma talking about making lefse with her mom, and the music playing in the background of endless laugh is something I will never forget. I now appreciate the time put into making lefse, and must of all I appreciate the taste! When I see lefse at the dinner table it will remind me of the short experience with my grandma, and let me look back at my roots. Tradition is a big part of cooking. Recipes can be past on from generation to generation and help us remember where we came from. So fellow chefs go out in the world and make your roots shine through food!

Recipe

Ingredients

• 10 pounds potatoes, peeled
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/3 cup heavy cream

 

• 1 tablespoon salt
• 1 tablespoon white sugar
• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

Directions

1. Cover potatoes with water and cook until tender. Run hot potatoes through a potato ricer. Place into a large bowl. Beat butter, cream, salt, and sugar into the hot riced potatoes. Let cool to room temperature.
2. Stir flour into the potato mixture. Pull off pieces of the dough and form into walnut size balls. Lightly flour a pastry cloth and roll out lefse balls to 1/8 inch thickness.
3. Cook on a hot (400 degree F/200 C) griddle until bubbles form and each side has browned. Place on a damp towel to cool slightly and then cover with damp towel until ready to serve with butter and sugar.