Kartoffelklöße

The story

Potato dumplings on the German table fall into two great family "camps": those made from cooked potatoes, and those made from raw grated potatoes strengthened with a little cooked potato for better texture. Which version a household makes often gives away the region the family originally came from. The process is long. The potatoes are boiled a day ahead and left to rest, then grated or put through a grinder, mixed with flour or starch and shaped by hand into balls that cook in water kept at the gentlest simmer; boil them too hard and they fall apart. Many grandmothers had a trick of their own, such as a cube of toasted bread hidden in the center of each dumpling for a crisp surprise at the first bite. Together with goose and red cabbage, Kartoffelklöße complete the most classic German Christmas trio, and it is exactly this combination that third- and fourth-generation German Americans recall most often when they describe "the taste of Christmas at Grandma's."