Recipe of the week: Hungarian plum dumplings
Sweet cinnamon plum melting in the soft potato dough rolled into crumble – yet another indispensable dessert recipe that will get round your guests even if they’re on a diet. Hungarian plum dumplings (szilvásgombóc) are best when made by our grandmothers, but you can also become and expert with practice 😉
Because the truth is, this won’t be the simplest recipe in your traditional Hungarian dishes cookbook. It takes time, practice and a lot of preparation, but the end result is worth all the sweat. The recipe itself is not that complex, but you need to know the tricks of dough-making so that you won’t end up with too big or too small dumplings.
According to szilvasgomboc.hu, plum dumplings are an essential part of the Hungarian cuisine. They belong to the family of stuffed doughs, which are very popular again in Hungarian restaurants. It is believed that some restaurants still employ special ladies who are experts in dough-making.
The toughest part is filling the dough with the plum in a way that the dough completely covers the fruit, so that it will stay put during the cooking process. Otherwise, the cooking water will be more delicious than the dumplings.
Most of us have lovely memories connected to plum dumplings. Let it be the dumpling fight scene from the famous Hungarian movie The Rascal of the Railroad Shack (Indul a bakterház), the song titled Plum Dumpling from Hungarian musical The Attic (A padlás), or just the joy of making it with granny as a kid.
When buying the ingredients, ask for help with the potatoes as the best are the ones with high starch content. The plums should be ripe and sweet. You’ll also need some flour, butter/fat, bread crumbs, sugar and cinnamon. But let’s see the exact amounts.
Ingredients:
- 1 kg of potatoes
- 5 kg of plums
- 350 grams of flour
- 130 grams of butter/fat
- ground cinnamon
- 100 grams of bread crumbs
- cinnamon sugar for sprinkling
Directions:
Cut up the potatoes into cubes, cook them, mash them and let them cool down. While the potatoes are cooking, you can pit the plums. Mix the mashed potatoes with the flour, 30 grams of butter and a pinch of salt. Roll the dough until you reach the thickness of 5 mm, and cut 6×6 cm big squares. Place the plums in the middle of each square and sprinkle them with some cinnamon. Cover the plums with the dough and form dumplings with your hands. Carefully put them into boiling water. Wait until they rise to the surface and cook them for 3-5 minutes. Meanwhile, roast the bread crumbs on the leftover butter. Take out your dumplings with some sort of a sieve, let them drip and cover them with the roasted crumbs. When serving the plum dumplings, sprinkle them with some cinnamon sugar.
Enjoy your meal!
Featured image: www.facebook.com/Mindmegette.hu
Ce: bm
Source: Daily News Hungary
5 kg plum?? That’s a bit too much!!
My mother used to make these often… so delicious!!!
you need an egg and a some 2-3 tablespoon of semolina otherwise will melt in the water.
5kg plum us way too much maybe 700-800 gramms .
I am doing it myself, learned from my Mom and Grandma. I need to make some corrections: First you don’t cook the potatoes piled that way it picks up too much water. Cook with peel on in salted water. Second correction: when the breadcrumbs toasted mix it with powdered sugar and that is the way to roll the cocked ball inside, gets better taste. Third correction: make sure the plums are not too big, too big and will not cook through. You put a whole plum on the middle of dough square, mix half teaspoon cinnamon with granulated sugar and put half teaspoon sugar mixture into plum before forming the ball. Be careful with cinnamon if you put too much the ball will be bitter. Hope I helped with my correction