Celebrated pastry chef Gesine Bullock-Prado shares the flavors of Vermont’s *SIX* seasons and shows us how to make potato dumplings, one of more than 100 recipes in her new cookbook, My Vermont Table.
Potato Dumplings
MAKES 12
Potato dumplings should be baseball size. Period. They should be large enough that, no matter how they are served, with a stew or soup, they breach the surface like a starchy whale. They’re also best filled with crispy, buttery croutons, but they’re still delicious without them. Just remember, BIG!
CROUTONS
6 slices stale bread
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
DUMPLINGS
21⁄2 pounds Yukon Gold potatoes, skin on
11⁄2 cups potato starch (you can replace with corn-
starch, but potato starch is preferred) 2 large eggs
1 teaspoon salt
All-purpose flour for shaping dumplings
MAKE THE CROUTONS
Cut the stale bread into 1⁄2-inch cubes. Melt the butter in a skillet over medium heat. Add the bread cubes and fry, stirring occasionally, until crispy and golden brown. Transfer to a paper towel–lined plate and once cooled, seal in a resealable plastic bag or an airtight container.
MAKE THE DUMPLINGS
Bring water to a boil in a large stockpot or Dutch oven. Add the potatoes, making sure the water covers the potatoes by at least 2 inches. Cook until fork-tender. Remove the pot from the heat and drain the potatoes in a colander. Place a tamis or drum sieve over a large bowl. Halve a potato, place the halves, flesh side down, in the sieve, and press through the sieve with a
bowl scraper or a large rubber spatula. Scrape up the skin and discard, and continue with the remaining potatoes. Allow to come to room temperature and then refrigerate until cold, at least 1 hour to overnight.
Stir in 1 cup of the potato starch and the eggs and salt to make a dough. Test a golf ball–size dumpling by pressing together a small handful of dough in your hands to make sure it holds together. If it’s too moist and sticky, add more starch to the mixture and make another small test dumpling.
Bring a large pot of salted water to a simmer. Add the test dumpling to the water and watch to see whether it stays together in the simmering water. If it breaks apart, add more starch to the remaining mixture.
Flour your hands and make 12 to 13 baseball- size dumplings, pressing two or three croutons into the middle of the dough of each dumpling and sealing them in. Gently lower the dump- lings into the simmering water with a slotted spoon, adding only as many dumplings as can bob in the water side by side. Cook for 15 to 20 minutes and remove with a slotted spoon. Cook the remaining dumplings, then serve immediately.
Excerpted from MY VERMONT TABLE: Recipes for all (Six) Seasonsby Gesine Bullock-Prado Copyright © 2023. Used with permission of the publisher, Countryman Press. All rights reserved.
