Lefse

Being born and raised in Minnesota means being familiar with heritage dishes like lefse and lutefisk. While I’ve never developed a taste for boiled fish soaked in lye, I do love lefse.

If you’ve never had lefse, it a type of flat bread. It’s made of potatoes, butter, cream, and flour. It’s very thin and moist, and it looks similar to a tortilla.

Many people eat it with just butter, butter and white sugar, butter with cinnamon/sugar, and butter with brown sugar.

I’m on team “Butter with Brown Sugar”!

Two weekends in a row we’ve had a lefse making party at our house with family and friends helping to make six batches of lefse to eat, share, and freeze for later this winter.

I’ve made lefse via my husband’s grandma’s recipe and a family friend’s recipe. Both are exactly the same, except one insists on Russet potatoes and the other tells us to use red potatoes. That is definately the heritage part.

Lefse Recipe:

5 Cups riced potatoes (ricing is key)

1/2 cup butter (real of course)

1/2 cup cream (whole of course)

2 cups of flour

Rice the potatoes while they are hot. Melt butter/cream with hot potatoes and mash. Then put in the frig to get COLD. After a few hours, you can mix the flour into the batter, which will be moist and sticky. You can use extra flour to roll the lefse out, but too much will make them dry and brittle. Good luck! 

Do you make lefse? If so, which “topping team” are you on?