Meat-filled dumplings
Potato dough filled with fresh or smoked meat is to be found in different variations yet in several villages of Horehronie. This filling meal full of taste is typical for villages Heľpa, Pohorelá or Šumiac with slight adjustment. Housewives used to wake up early in the morning in order to prepare them for men, who went to mow the fields or work with wood in the forest. It is said, that poor people ate even the boiled off water from the dumplings as a soup. Merely, the water from “halušky” was made use of. Adjusted with “bryndza” it was eaten as a “bryndza” soup.
Ingredients for 4 portions:
- 500 g peeled potatoes
- 330 g fine flour
- 27 g breadcrumbs
- 130 g smoked meat
- 50 g skinless bacon
- 1 large onion
- 1 egg
- Ground black pepper
- Marjoram
- Salt
- 2 cloves of garlic
Preparation:
- Peel and grate potatoes into a mash.
- Add smashed garlic, egg, smoked meat cut into pieces, breadcrumbs, ground black pepper, marjoram and salt.
- While still stirring the mixture, keep adding fine flour until the dough starts unsticking from the bowl.
- Form small balls out of the dough and cover them in fine flour.
- Let one potato cut into pieces cook in a pot with salted water.
- Put the meat balls into boiling water and cook for 20 minutes.
- Roast bacon in a small pot and later add an onion cut into pieces.
- When the balls are well cooked, strain and pour bacon with onion over them.
