Steamed Dumpling (Parená Knedľa)
Ingredients: 500g of flour (whole wheat or all-purpose), 0.25L of milk, 1 egg, packet of yeast, 1 teaspoon of sugar, few teaspoons of salt, few days old French bread
Prep time: 3 hours (includes about 2 hours to let the dough rise)
One of the unique staples of Slovak and Czech kitchens is not a dish, but a side. There are several dishes that are traditionally served not with the standard helping of rice or potatoes, but with a dumpling. Now, this isn’t your typical dumpling. It isn’t a round ball filled with some meats or vegetables. Instead, it is the size of a large loaf of bread. It is sliced, just like the bread, and maybe 4 or 5 slices will be served with your meal. This dumpling is called parená knedľa (steamed dumpling). Sometimes it’s also referred to as the kysnutá knedľa (raised-dough dumpling). It is commonly served with saucy dishes – such as various goulashes or stuffed peppers. It is a great combination! You cut the dumpling into small, bite-size pieces and use them to soak up the juice. In this recipe, I show you how to prepare the dumpling. It’s not very difficult, but there are few tricky steps along the way. Just make sure to follow the steps and you will be fine.
Take little bit of milk (mlieko), and heat it up in the microwave for about 10 seconds so it’s lukewarm. Add one teaspoon of sugar (cukor) and a packet of yeast (droždie). Whisk well to aerate the concoction and let sit for about 10 minutes. The yeast will rise.
In a pot, combine about 500g of flour (múka), one egg (vajce), few dashes of salt (soľ), the yeast mixture and about 0.2L of room temperature milk. You don’t want the milk to be too cold, otherwise the yeast may stop working. Stir everything together, and knead for about 10 minutes. You want the dough to be smooth, and non-sticky. You should be able to remove the wooden spoon without the dough sticking to it. Simply add more flour if you need to make it less sticky.
Next take a slice of stale, few days-old white bread (biely chlieb), and cut it into small cubes. Gently mix it in. From my own observation, adding bread is much more common in the Czech republic. Dumplings in Slovakia are often made without it. Feel free to skip this step.
Cover the pot with some cloth and let sit for about 2 hours. Or, if your pot is on the smaller side (like mine was), until the dough starts getting dangerously close to the top, which took only about an hour.
Dust a wooden board with flour and form the dough into two loafs. The dumplings will approximately double in size when you cook them. Keep this in mind, if you don’t have a very large pot. Cover by a cloth, and let sit for another 20 minutes.
Bring salted water to boil in a large pot. Make sure you have a lid for this pot. Being single, my kitchen contains just two pots. The big one is not really big at all, so I had to cook the dumplings one at a time. Luckily Slovak cooking requires very little kitchen equipment! Hopefully your pot is bigger so you can cook both dumplings at once. Anyway, once the water is boiling, carefully place the dumpling in the pot. It should float. If it doesn’t, take a ladle and scoop to the top. Cover immediately. Reduce the heat so the pot doesn’t boil over, but make sure the water stays boiling. You want the steam – the dumpling actually cooks from the hot steam. So for this reason, make sure not to open the lid until done. This is very important! Otherwise, the dumpling won’t come out puffy. Cook for 18 minutes. Use a ladle, or two coffee plates to remove the dumpling.
Poke the dumpling in couple places with a fork to let the steam out. Then, take a sewing thread (or a dental floss), and use it to slice the dumpling. Supposedly there are dedicated dumpling slicers, but this is so much easier!
And there you have it. For a delicious meal to go with a knedla, try the Segedin goulash.
Do you have a variation on the recipe (I heard some people put beer among other things in the dough)? I would love to hear it! Please leave a comment and share.
Tak teda ta knedla si Ti vydarila!
I can’t wait to try this! I had this dumpling served with a dinner that included red cabbage and pork on a recent visit to see family in Slovakia. It was wonderful!! Thank you for translating these recipies!!
Yeah, that dish is great. It’s called vepřo-knedlo-zelo (pork, dumpling, cabbage), and it’s what I consider the national dish of the Czech republic. Let me know how they turn out.
Yesterday I had this crazy idea to see what would happen if I soaked the dumplings in egg, and made French toast out of them. Surprisingly they tasted really good!
I am making Chicken Paprikash today, with anoth4er type dumpling..Halusky…one of my families favorites..
I love paprikash with halusky! If you would like, you can take photos and post your recipe. Otherwise, I’ll have to make this dish in a near future. Thanks for reminding me.
hi. please post recepie for buchty and byrndza halusky and zemiaky placky. i got one packet of zemiaky placky but it is written in slovak. can you send in the recepie.
thanks
I just posted the buchty recipe. And here is the link the recipe for bryndzové halušky. They didn’t turn out looking as nice as what you may have seen in a restaurant, I think because I didn’t have the right kind of a strainer. Thanks for the suggestion for zemiakové placky (haruľa). I’ll make these soon. It’s a great snack.
Hi Rama, I just posted the recipe for potato pancakes.
Yes! I think I finally found the right recipe. We had a restaurant ran by a hungarian cook that made raised dumplings that look like these. I remember them being rye bread with caraway seeds in it. They were made in a loaf then sliced after they were cooked. He always was giving me plates of them because “I was to skinny” sliced with pork gravy on top!!! Does this ring a bell with anyone else?
Can you make steamed dumplings ahead of time and then when ready to serve rehet and slice them??? How would you reheat them?
Thx
You can, but they are good for only a day, two max. They get hard after that. I usually heat them up in the microwave by wrapping them in a wet paper towel.
Damn, I try and I always fail … one of these days I’ll do it right, as I love steamed dumplings
Thanks Lubos. I love knedla & I will try to make it tomorrow. I work with many Slovaks here in Cookstown in Northern Ireland…. I have been to Slovakia twice now and I have aquired an appetite for the food. Cheers.
Knedliky is a Czech (and German) side dish, not Slovakian at all. Slovaks stolen the knedliky from the Czech cuisine. Few years ago we could eat only halusky (or rice or potatoes) in Slovakian restaurants, knedliky was considered as a Czech food. In Slovak villages among the Slovak peasants the knedliky is a totally unknown food today.
Hi Anton. What’s the source for your info? I admit I do not know much about the history of knedle, but I am pretty sure they have been eaten in Slovakia for at least the last 50 years. For instance, this recipe comes from a Slovak cookbook published in the 1950s. Many recipes in that book also call for the dish to be served with knedla. Knedle are very commonly prepared by the villagers. Both of my grandmas prepare them on a regular basis.
Ajoy Anton,
My husband’s family is also rusyn! Can you tell me what village your grandfather (dedo) is from. Nancy
I come from Austria, but my grandfather was born is a rusyn village in eastern Slovakia. My grandfather’s family didn’t prepare knedliky, but halusky was an everyday staple with bryndza or sauerkraut. I think your grandmothers come from the Czech borderlands. What was the dish that eaten with knedliky (as a granish) at your grandmother”s housholds?
In Austria knedliky is commonly called “Böhmische Knödel”, which means Bohemian (=Czech) dumplings. In Austria and in some parts of Germany raised (yeasted) dumplings are also cooked, but they are cooked in small balls (not in a whole bread-like loaf)and Germans and Austrians eat this Knödeln with Sauerbraten (similar to Czech svickova). Have you got a recipe for Svickova? It is a very good Czech dish (You can find in almost all restaurants in Prague), but probably eaten in some parts of Slovakia too. Unfortunately my rusyn-slovakian grandfather never heard about it.
Hi Anton, I come from Banská Bystrica, smack in the middle of Slovakia. I am finding out, thorough the comments left on this website and the additional reading they lead me to do, that the cuisine of eastern Slovakia is very much different from the rest of the country. A while ago somebody asked me if I heard of a “yucha” soup, which was prepared on Christmas by his grandma. I eventually track this down, and found an article about Christmas dishes in Eastern Slovakia. One of them was this mysterious soup. Also, my family never prepared pierogis (pirohy). I always thought of them as a Polish or a Russian dish. But in America, I met quite a few Slovak-Americans who consider pierogis staple of Slovak cuisine. Coincidentally, majority of them comes (originally) from the east. Just out of curiousity, did your grandma make them?
It’s been a while since I’ve been to Austria, but I’ve had some Knödel in in Munich. They were delicious and definitely different from the Slovak ones! Even the Czech dumplings are different. Czechs make two kinds, these plain flour ones, and a darker kind. And I love “sviečková na smotane”. I actually just had it yesterday, but I didn’t get a chance to take photos. But I’ll add the recipe before I head back to the States.
I think the soup you mentioned is a sauerkraut soup similar your kapustnica soup. My grandfather’s wife (my grandmother died in the 1960s)often cooks this (especially for Christmas eve)with smoked pork and frankfurters. I’m not familiar with the Slovakian name, because I don’t speak this language. She cooked few years ago a very interesting Christmas dessert. This was a puding like dessert and contained cooked wheat (or maybe barley or some other cereal)and poppy seed and was very sweet. Are you familiar with it? Unfortunately I can’t ask my grandfather’s wife, because she is very old and ill. I have never tasted pirogi, but I have heard about it as an Russian or Polish food.
Hello! I’m so glad I found this recipe. I just recently had my first Knedľa. They were store bought, but were good none the less. My boyfriend’s mother is Slovak and did not have her mother’s recipe to make them. I am excited to try to make them for my boyfriend and myself. She had made them with beef tongue and a dill gravy. Would you happen to know of any recipes for this?
Edee, Let me see what I can do.
You already know how to make knedlu.
Here is Dill Gravy (kôprova omáčka):
3 tablespoons of flour
2 tablespoons of oil
1 teaspoon of sugar
2.5 dl of milk or 2 dl of sour cream
salt, vinegar, chopped dills.
heat the oil, stir in flour to make roux (zápražku). Add a bit water and milk, boil it a little. At the end add salt, sugar, vinegar, and chopped dill
Here is a beef tongue (hovädzí jazyk):
There are a few recipes, e.g. with mushrooms, or smoked tongue, but if you serve it with dill gravy, it’s just a simple thing
Boil the tongue in salt water, add some black pepper, caraway seeds, boil until soft.
slice the tongue into thin slices and serve with knedlou and dill sauce.
Do knedle sa nedava ziaden chleba. A hlavne, ked sa to vola Parena knedla, tak sa to ma PARIT a nie varit vo vode.
Hi DK. There are many varieties of knedla. There is even a joke about making knedla that goes something like this: recept hovoril “krájame tri dni staré rožky”, a ja som krájal len jeden deň a už som ich mal plnú vaňu…
But you are right, adding bread is not required (I think I even mentioned this in the recipe). My grandma also only steams her knedle, the way you suggested. She does this by placing a cloth over the pot of boiling water and fastening it either with a very large rubber band or with a string. She then places knedle on top of this cloth. I wanted to try this other method (also from “Recepty Starej Mamy”) because it seemed like less work – and less cleanup. In the end, I think the two methods are more-or-less identical. The dumpling floats in water, so only a small bottom section gets actually cooked. The rest gets steamed. That’s why it’s so important to keep the lid on the pot while cooking.
Anyway, if you like, you can send me step-by-step photos of you preparing various Slovak food. I’ll be more than glad to post them to the website.
Austrian and German dumplings are different. They are made from potatoes, and are cooked in boiling water. They usually make small balls or ovals. To prepare it you have to boil potatoes then you have to press them to make a mash. Add salt, egg and big grain flour (hruba muka – admin correct me if I am not correct). Than you make a balls or any other shape and boil them in salty water until they are tough ( roughly 12 min) leave them to chill.
Ahoj,
I tried to make knedla according to your recipe but something went wrong…
The dough didn’t rise a lot after the 2 hours and I ended up with 2 tiny loaves. Boiled them for 18 mins but they were raw…right size though. You wrote that I was supposed to knead the dough for 10 mins. I did it with my hands but I remember my ex mother in law doing it with a wooden spoon. Do you think that might have been the reason? And with concern to the 18 mins. Can they stay longer? sorry to bother you. I know knedla is not easy. I made gulash though and it was perfect. thanks.
Barbara, what kind of yeast did you use? And when you “primed it” (not sure what the right technical word is) did it get bubbly like in the picture? Perhaps the yeast you used was old or somehow defective. The reason for kneading is to give the yeast air. Yeast requires two ingredients to operate: sugar and air. These are then converted into carbon dioxide (bubbles) and alcohol (less important here, but more so in brewing beer, for instance).
Hi there, thanks for answering my questions! In the end it worked but I steamed the knedla..didn’t boil them and it worked perfectly. Maybe it also depends on water composition. It might sound strange but water in Rome contains a lot of scale. But in the end I made it and it was vyborne! thanks a lot, you ‘doing a great job with this website..
It is really nice to see how knedla from slovakia can make such world wide discusion
Anyway i m very happy for this side, i will come and look here when i will miss inspiration . Good old recepies can always use for a tasty food
Thank you Jass
Thanks Jass. But do you really wonder? Slovak knedle are the best part of Slovak cuisine. I hope one day to see a dish with knedle offered in a regular American restaurant. That would be something…
lubos…. if i ever open a restaurant i will totally have it on my menu!
In 1996 I moved to Illinois, where there is a vast diversity of ethnic foods, but it was a trip to Wisconsin to a Bohemian Restaurant where I had steamed bread dumplings and fruit dumplings that started my obsession to know how they were made. On and off for YEARS now i’ve hunted and hunted for recipes trying to figure out what to call it to make the search easier etc but up until a couple days ago when I happened upon your website was my QUEST complete……..Up until then I had to buy the frozen one which just aren’t the same……
Last week I made the bread dumplings along with the saurkraut and pork goulash……….though they spread out a tad more then up, the taste was great and something I rarely say but i’ll definately make it over and over again (My husband has gotten to the point of saying Don’t ask me if you can make a recipe again cuz you NEVER make the same thing twice) So the fact that I want to make it over and over is definately a compliment……..and I want to say Taksa mychet for taking the time to put the recipe up………..
Som straaasne nadsena z tejto stranky a velmi vdacna tvorcovi za jej existovanie! Hned je to poznat ked niekto nieco robi s radostou a potesenim. Dobra praca!
Hi!
I made my first knedla today (according ur recipe) and everything went great! And I made svieckova na smotane for the first time and it was delicious. Thanx for posting the recipe and for nice web site! Great job!
Hi – I really like your website very much and the recepise sound great. My only problem is I am having a hard time trying to transform the metric system (of grams, kilo, deka) etc. into pounds and oz., . The parene buchty sounds so great but 500 grams of flour how do I figure out what it is in pounds. Thanks for your help.
Dasa
Thank you Dagmar! I try to convert the weights where possible – but on some recipes I did get lazy. When it comes to converting between kilograms and pounds, the process is easy. Just multiply the kilograms by 2.2 to get the weight in pounds (or by 2 for a quick estimate). Or for an even quicker estimate, it’s approximately half of the smallest package of “Gold Medal” all-purpose flour. That is what I used in making of this recipe. I did not actually weigh the flour.
Now, when it comes to making dough, don’t believe any numbers listed here, or in any recipe. Making dough is really an art. The flower amounts are estimates at best. The best way is to start with a bowl of flour into which you add little bit of water. Work the water in with your hands (this is how my grandma does it). Most likely you will not have enough – and in your bowl you will have dry flour with small dough balls. Add more water until you get smooth mixture that resembles the photos. And similarly, if the dough gets to watery, just add more flour.
I hope this helps!