They’re round, delicious and on a plate right in front of us: original Tyrolean bacon dumplings. Our colleague Claudia, a passionate and experienced ‘dumpling maker’, shows us how to prepare…
They’re round, delicious and on a plate right in front of us: original Tyrolean bacon dumplings. Our colleague Claudia, a passionate and experienced ‘dumpling maker’, shows us how to prepare real ‘Tiroler Speckknödel’ at our weekly Tyrolean Treats Cooking Class.
Claudia is a dumpling expert. (c)hall-wattens.at
Quality ingredients are key. It’s best to opt for organic and regional products. If you don’t buy them directly from a farmer, there are many supermarkets that now offer these products.
Fresh organic eggs from a farmer. (c)hall-wattens.at
You need the following ingredients for Tyrolean bacon dumplings for four persons:
280 g dumpling bread (or 6 stale bread rolls)
1/4 l milk
2 eggs
100 g very finely chopped speck (smoked pork belly)
1 finely chopped onion
1 TBS chopped parsley
40 g butter
Pinch of salt
Some flour
Preparation:
- Place diced bread into a bowl and season with salt. Beat the milk and eggs together and pour over the bread. Leave to absorb for half an hour.
Combine the bread and eggs. (c)hall-wattens.at
- In a saucepan, melt the butter and cook the onions, add the pork belly and fry until browned. Add onions, pork belly and chopped parsley to the bread mixture.
Fry the speck (pork belly) and onion in a pan. (c)hall-wattens.at
Fresh parsley is essential to bacon dumplings. (c)hall-wattens.at
- Season with salt and mix all the ingredients well. Add a little flour if needed to make the dough combine.
Mix in all the ingredients. (c)hall-wattens.at
Press the dough together so that the dumplings stay round when cooked. (c)hall-wattens.at
- With wet hands form the dumplings into 8-12 uniform balls, roll well.
In a saucepan bring some salted water to a low simmer and carefully add the dumplings. Cook for approx. 12 minutes. (Make sure the water does not boil otherwise the dumplings will fall apart.
Claudia’s tip:
‘I use a steamer insert and gently steam dumplings over simmering water so they don’t fall apart.’
Good dumplings immediately float to the surface of soup. Dumplings taste best if they’re served as soon as they’re cooked.
A delicacy: Tyrolean bacon dumplings in soup. (c)hall-wattens.at
According to an old custom, you eat your first dumpling in soup, the second with sauerkraut or autumn turnips, the third with preserved foods or pork dishes and the fourth with salad. If you’ve got space for more, you start from the beginning again. Cress salad and lamb’s lettuce also go well with dumplings.
Here are a few tips from Tyrol’s master dumpling maker Maria Drewes (from her classic cookery book Tiroler Küche:
- Dry dumpling bread needs more liquid and should be left longer to absorb the liquid.
- One bread roll is equivalent to approx. 40 grams of dry dumpling bread.
- You normally shape dumpling dough into balls with wet hands or with a spoon and a wet hand.
- Some dumplings can also be rolled in a little flour so that they don’t fall apart when cooked.
- Cook the dumplings in a wide pan and don’t place them too close together so that they have plenty of space to grow in size and keep their shape.
