Norwegian – part: 1 Lefsa

On our yearly trips to MN and WI, I try to find new adventures for us every time.  The area has a high percentage of folks of Norwegian heritage so you find a lot of the art and food of the country.  Last year we stopped at such a shop called “Lefsa Times” that offers classes on how to cook lefsa.  (Lefsa is a yummy potato crepe/tortilla type of thing.)

So as we prepared for our 2013 trip I worked on arranging a lefsa making class.  When Himself’s cousins in Winona heard about it, Sharon invited me to come out to her sister’s house and learn to make it with her family.  Well that sounded a whole lot more fun!

We headed out and soon discovered this was going to be a whole family event… the sister and brother-in-law, nephew and his wife plus their kids (and a few of their friends), and her niece.  Wow!

They had made up the first batch of ‘dough’ before we arrived.  It starts with riced potatoes. 

Lefsa making takes very particular cooking tools.  There is the lefsa cooker, the lefsa rolling board, the lefsa rolling pin (it is grooved), and the lefsa stick. 

Once you finish mixing the dough, it needs to cool for a bit so it isn’t sticky.  Then you grab a handful of it…

And pop it onto the center of the board.  (And yes, Cutter is as big of a man as he looks.  My hand barely reached to his middle knuckle!)

You roll it very thin… the cloth cover over the rolling board has writing on it.  The lefsa needs to be thin enough that you can see the writing!

Here you can see how thin it really is … and what a messy project it is to make lefsa!

Once it is rolled out, you use ‘the stick’ to lift it from the board…

…and transfer it to the very hot griddle.  A lefsa griddle gets much hotter than a normal griddle or electric skillet. 

You cook it until it browns, then you use the stick to flip it so the other side cooks.  It doesn’t take long.  We had an assembly line going.

Perfect lefsa! 

The stages of lefsa cooking.  From there, you eat!  Some put just butter on them, others do butter with cinnamon sugar.  I like them both ways.

It was a really wonderful time spent in laughter and sharing.  I am so appreciative that they opened their house to us and welcomed us in as family.