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First off, I'm German, so you would think I know, but it seems traditional cuisine has not been passed down my family tree.

This question really consists of two parts:

  • What makes potatos dough (or I guess, starchy dough in general, there's all kinds of dumplings, there's pasta, etc) keep its shape when you boil it in water? This may extend to some degree to deep frying.
  • What properties make balls of dough "fluffy" or "textured", but not "tough", "rubber-like" etc.? I guess this will go somewhere along the lines of what structure the starch granules form with the water, how stable it is, and how dense.

There is about a million recipes online for cooked, raw, and 50-50 knödels. Some have egg, some don't, and just about everywhere there's people asking how to do them right. There's also a question to that here on this site.

However, it's hard to get some actual information on the key aspects (this is a problem I have with recipes in general). I'm pretty sure there ought to be no egg and not a lot of flour in the dumplings. I'm also certain that either all cooked, all raw or half-half are common and widespread varieties, but there it stops.

I would like to find some science based instructions, the kind of articles Kenji runs on The Food Lab. It looks like most recipes have some way of enriching the dough with starch above what's in the potatoes anyway, by draining water from the potatoes and adding starch powder. The father of a friend wraps the potatoes in cloths and puts them through the spin cycle of the washing machine, which (because of the preceding meticulous cleaning of the latter) is a tedious procedure that's only done for Christmas.

Millions of grandmas have reached the proper end result via various routes, using plain ingredients and unsophisticated equipment, so there should be some basic principle at work, which can be analyzed with science, very much like with roasting beef or frying potatoes.

Maybe, we could dig up something about related recipes, like gnocchi, which would be helpful.

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Hanno Fietz
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  • I'm pretty sure the "science" is just "get the right balance of potato, additional dry starch, and moisture". There are probably a lot of ways to get there (including washing machines), and for any reliable method, one could explain that it results in the right balance. So this seems a bit like a very specific recipe request. – Cascabel Dec 26 '12 at 04:55
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    I'm very interested in the answer to this according to Jefromi's idea of the "science" (ie a ratio). If you don't mind checking back here in a few days (or possibly weeks) I'll do some research and try to get a definitive answer. – Chris Steinbach Dec 26 '12 at 05:34
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    Pointing out that [an attempt to avoid chemicals in paper is impossible](http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/29201/greaseproof-paper) is unhelpfully snarky, but damning a request for technical details of dumpling cookery as "just" a "recipe request" isn't, @Jefromi? An answer that _does_ explain what the right balance is and why it's right would be a fine piece of food writing and a stellar contribution to this site. It'll take a lot of work to write such an answer, but that doesn't make this a recipe search. There's a lot of info required beyond your tart "just get the right balance". – jscs Dec 26 '12 at 07:29
  • @josh I think the OP has already explained what makes the right balance right - it's the ratio that yields those results. The hard part, and the substance of the question, is reliably getting there (e.g. getting water out of potatoes with a washing machine) and that part is essentially a recipe request. And I point this out because recipe requests are off topic here. I understand that it's difficult to find a reliable recipe, and that it's probably even difficult to follow one, but asking for a really good recipe is still a recipe request. – Cascabel Dec 26 '12 at 14:10
  • For what it's worth, I think it sounds like the real trick here is just getting the potatoes dry enough, and asking how to do that (and how to tell when they are) is a great question. Asking explicitly for a whole recipe is where it gets dodgy. – Cascabel Dec 26 '12 at 15:00
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    @Jefromi, I'm not looking for a recipe. I don't even like recipes. I edited my question to make my objective a little clearer. – Hanno Fietz Dec 26 '12 at 22:23
  • a gold medal to the one who can find a technique/formula for any ol' potato. They could then try turning any ol' grapes into good wine – Pat Sommer Dec 27 '12 at 00:41
  • I've only done some very peripheral research so far and I can see that I have a lot to learn in order to give a good answer. There are a few things that I think are key. A potato with a low percentage water content is needed. For fluffiness, I believe the starch grains should not be allowed to swell so that they burst cell walls; the starch grains should gel in a controlled manner. Dried potato starch (or possibly flour) should be added to bind the mixture. To dry the potato, I'm leaning towards baking and letting the steam escape efficiently by ricing onto a baking tray. – Chris Steinbach Dec 31 '12 at 08:12
  • This [related question](http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/21005/how-can-i-replicate-authentic-german-potato-dumplings) is worth reading too. – Chris Steinbach Dec 31 '12 at 08:14
  • My grandfathers technique is a half and half, but he juices the raw half, and boils & mashes the 2nd half. This technique may be easier to reason about the ratios of water than ricing. He also insists the dumplings needs to be simmered gently rather than boiled, so the temperature going through to the middle. Finally, they float when they are finished cooking, so the swelling to a particular density is a factor. – stevenrcfox Mar 07 '14 at 11:05
  • You have to use the most floury potatoes you can find. if you are in Germany ask in the shop/market which ones are best. – RedSonja Jan 30 '17 at 08:59

2 Answers2

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Your dealing with a few things here. First is starches in general. The thing to know about starches is how they gelatinize and at what temperatures.

This powerpoint is a nice primer on that topic. www.cfs.purdue.edu/class/f&n630/gelatinization.ppt

Basically your dealing with amylose and amylopectin, together they are what we know as a starch. When they come in contact with water the starch cells begin to swell and when their gelatinization temperature is met they burst and release their contents into the medium they are in. In the case of a dough ball, your dealing with tons and tons of little cells being held together loosely at first by the physical pressure of kneading them into balls and then when the heat causes the starches to gelatinize they adhere to one another kind of like being caught in a net.

Now the fluffiness portion of the question can really depend on how the dough is being cooked. For something like a dumpling being cooked in the boiling water, one would typically want to work the dough as little as possible to avoid making it too dense and if using flour to lessen the gluten formation that can make it very chewy like bread. Some recipes call for leaveners that can create gas bubbles when heated to a certain temperature and then through gelatinization the bubbles are trapped inside the dough and create an airy texture.

Brendan
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Another German here who also tried to make dumplings from potatoes.

From my experience with (almost) all potato dumplings, I found that adding more flour (or starch) makes the dumplings keep their shape in water, but at the same time makes them taste more 'rubber-like'. I just checked in 'Il Cucchiaio d'aregento', they say so, too.

Here are some tricks that helped me to minimize the amount of flour in my dough:

  • Always use 'mehligkochende' (deepl translates it as floury) potatoes
  • At first, prepare them in the oven, wrapped in tin foil, this way they turn out a lot less 'watery' and requires less flour for the dough
  • Never use any sort of blender, just mash the potatoes
  • Add semolina instead of starch or flour to the dough (I found that in an Austrian recipe for Marillenknödel)
  • The water in which you boil the dumplings should be just below the boiling point so it does not tear apart the dumplings (You may want to steam them at first)

I hope my techniques will help you to get closer to the desired result as they did for me.

PS: Similar tricks also hold for Gnocchi

Eulenfuchswiesel
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