Lefse Recipes

In order to have your potato lefse turn out tender and tasty be sure to preheat your grill for 10-15 minutes at the highest position on your dial. This should brown your lefse on both sides in just a short while. This will usually be at 500 degrees.

After baking a few rounds, the dial can be turned down to give the heat you like best.

Recipe using Pillsbury Hungry Jack Potato Flakes 

3 cups potato flakes 
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup butter or margarine (use butter for best flavor)
3/4 cup water (approximately)
1 cup milk
1 cup flour  

Combine Potato Flakes and salt in mixing bowl. 

Place the quarter cup of butter in a 1-cup measuring cup and add water to make a full 1-cup measure. Transfer to saucepan and bring to a boil. Add this to the dry mixture and mix well with fork.  Add milk and mix well. Refrigerate until mix is completely chilled. Do not let the surface get dry. 

When dough is chilled, work in flour with your hands. Form into balls, a little larger than a golf ball size, and place in container lined with a towel. Refrigerate overnight. 

The next day, roll out the dough very thin on a cloth-covered pastry board dusted with flour. Bake on the Heritage Grill that has been preheated to 500 degrees. This recipe makes approximately 12 lefse. 

Lefse with Cooked Potatoes 

8 cups riced, cooked potatoes (16-20)
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup whipping cream
1 tablespoon salt
4 cups flour 

Peel potatoes and cook. Drain. Rice the potatoes in a ricer. Some bakers put the potatoes through the ricer twice. Add butter, cream, and salt. 

Let the mixture stand until cold--this is very important! Refrigerate overnight, if possible, but don't let the top get dry. 

Mix in flour and roll into balls about the size of a tennis ball or smaller. Keep the balls of dough in a cake pan in the refrigerator and take out one ball of dough at a time. 

Roll out the ball of dough paper thin on a lightly floured, cloth-covered board. Work the rolling pin back and forth and at many angles to form the lefse circle. 

Bake on the Heritage Grill at 500 degrees, flipping from one side to the other midway. You'll know the lefse is ready to flip when you see bubbles rise from the middle and the beginnings of large brown spots on the other side.

Cool between folded towels. Lefse may be frozen for several months.

Lefse Without Potatoes--submitted by Ellen Rittenhouse, one of our readers

Lefse from the kitchen of Minnie Limbo

1 qt. whole milk                   2/3 stick real butter
1/2 c. whipping cream           1 T. salt

Bring to full rolling, almost to the top of pan (WATCH!) in large heavy pan (4qt. Size).  Remove from heat and add all at once: 3 1/2 cups minus 2T unsifted flour. Mix well quickly and set aside to cool slightly.  Cooling can be hastened by spreading mixture in blobs on a large tray or platter.  As soon as it can be handled, knead, using a small amount of flour and form in a long roll. Slice off; roll paper thin with corrugated rolling pin on pastry canvas and bake on very hot griddle or lefse baker, turning to brown evenly.

Minnie Limbo was my Grandmother.  She lived in NE Nebraska until her death in 1981.  Her parents immigrated to the USA in the mid-1870's from Nord Aurdal, Valdres, Norway.

Lefse was made using this recipe each Christmas by my mother, Inez Knudson, in NE Kansas.  After moving to MN in 1974 I learned about potato lefse but have not made that kind.  When I make it I go back to Grandma's recipe!

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